


i told the moon to never let me go

by pumpkinless



Series: we will find a way home [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Engagement, Established Relationship, Explicit Sexual Content, Flashbacks, Humor, M/M, Pre-Kerberos Mission, Romance, a very tender & supportive relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-11
Updated: 2018-04-01
Packaged: 2019-03-16 17:13:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 57,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13640778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pumpkinless/pseuds/pumpkinless
Summary: Sometimes the best decisions are the most reckless, and Shiro's recklessness is inspired.





	1. meteorite // march 2, 2078

**Author's Note:**

  * For [eternalheatstroke](https://archiveofourown.org/users/eternalheatstroke/gifts).



Shiro is screwed the moment he stupidly hands his phone over to Matt during lunch so that he can look up a meme Shiro apparently needs to see. He’s too busy picking at his cafeteria tray disappointedly to think about what he’s doing—it was supposed to be Taco Tuesday, but instead he’s looking down at the saddest slab of vegan meatloaf he’s ever seen.

“Shiro,” Matt says. “What’s this?” He turns the screen to Shiro so he can see what popped up when Matt opened the internet browser.

All the life drains from Shiro’s body.

“Nothing,” Shiro hisses, snatching his phone back. “No, you saw nothing.”

“I saw your search history,” Matt says gleefully. He looks about three seconds away from jumping up and flipping over the cafeteria table out of excitement.

Shiro ignores Matt, who’s repeatedly chanting oh my god under his breath, and swiftly deletes his entire search history, closing six separate tabs in the process, and then he deletes his entire browsing history for good measure. The only incriminating thing left is the name of the website he commits to memory before snuffing it out of existence.

“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me,” Matt whines. The look on his face is so aggrieved that Shiro almost—almost—feels bad, but then Matt keeps talking. “As your best friend slash confidant slash love guru, I can’t believe you didn’t tell me you’re looking at engagement rings!”

Shiro glares, face hot. “Shut up! I swear it’s nothing, okay? I was just—curious.”

Matt laughs disbelievingly. “You’re curious.” He wipes at the corner of his eye. Shiro isn’t convinced he’s really crying, considering that Matt Holt is both a supreme liar and a little shit. “And this has nothing to do with Keith?”

“No,” Shiro says, trying to make his voice firm and intimidating, but still quiet enough that no one can tell something is going on.

“Then why the sudden interest in engagement rings three months before you’re going into space?”

“It’s not an interest, or anything, I was just curious,” Shiro maintains. He stabs his fork into the meatloaf and tries to chew what tastes mostly like a dry ball of pureed oats. Shiro hasn’t lost a stare-off like this in any of the years since he’s known Matt, and he’s not about to give in now.

Matt rolls his eyes, and Shiro barely resists to urge to say ‘I win.’ He’s not going to be petty today.

Finally, Matt shakes his head, grinning. “I can’t believe you’re gonna marry Keith.”

“That’s not what’s happening,” Shiro swiftly denies, glancing over his shoulder to make sure no one could be listening in on their conversation. “I’m not planning anything, and there’s nothing happening. I was just curious.” For some reason, he’s convinced himself that if he just keeps repeating the same thing over and over again, Matt will eventually come around, and they’ll forget this ever happened.

“Well, I know that’s a lie, because that’s exactly what you said when I found out you were looking at the application process for the Kerberos mission,” Matt says dryly. He jams a French fry into his mouth thoughtfully, leaning both elbows on the table. “Please tell me you’re not being an idiot about Keith again.”

Shiro narrows his eyes, slightly caught off guard. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Uh, I’m talking about the literal hearts in his eyes anytime you two are even in the same room as each other? Actually, both of your eyes. It’s disgusting how much you two love each other, I’m pretty sure if you said you wanted to drop out tomorrow to run away and raise alpacas he would follow you without even asking why. Like—” Matt stops, staring at Shiro in shock. “Dude. Are you kidding me? Do you not know about this? I know for a fact we went over this in the two and a half years before you got the guts to ask him out.”

“We’ve only been dating for four months,” Shiro says. It’s a perfectly logical objection, especially since he’s definitely not thinking about getting engaged. “I’m leaving soon. It wouldn’t—he wouldn’t—”

“Wouldn’t what?” Matt challenges. “Wouldn’t follow you to the edge of the solar system if he could just get his hands on a ship to take him there? Shiro. My buddy, my pal, my man, you’re an idiot.”

“No one proposes after four months, okay?” Shiro says, trying his best to shut this conversation down so he can jump straight to pretending it never even happened in the first place. “Especially not when they’re leaving for Pluto soon.”

Matt shrugs and returns most of his attention to his large plate of fries and assorted dipping sauces. “I mean, yeah, you’re absolutely right that it’s completely insane to even think about proposing this soon, but in case you haven’t noticed, Keith is pretty insane too. Plus you’ve known each other for three years, anyway, it’s not like you just met.”

“He’s not—” Shiro starts to say, but . . . he is well aware that Keith occasionally practices home invasion scenarios in his dorm room and sleeps with a knife under his pillow every night for quote-un-quote self-defense, and while that’s technically against Garrison regulations about personal weapons, Shiro isn’t going to be the one to report him. “That’s not the point, okay? I’m not planning to—to propose to Keith or anything like that.”

Matt snorts inelegantly, rolling his eyes at Shiro. “Whatever you say, man. But if you elope without bringing me along to be your best man? We’re over.”

 ***

Shiro doesn’t consciously start looking for engagement rings. He hears one of the students in the ethics class he TAs for squealing over her new diamond ring one day with an excited group of friends gathered around, and it just pops into his head that he has no idea if there are engagement rings out there that don’t come covered in gracefully inlaid diamonds and precious metals. He stops to congratulate her all the same as he hands back their quizzes before class, and it is a beautiful ring, white gold with a sizable diamond set into a circle of tiny amethysts. The gems look like a flower, and the metal is wrought to look like curled up branches.

“She proposed on my birthday, and amethyst is my birthstone,” Vera explains, smiling brightly as he peers at it. He can tell, immediately, that while the ring is important to her, the love shining in her eyes isn’t for the rocks at all.

“It’s mine, too,” he says to her, and somehow her face gets even happier. “Congratulations to you both.”

He glances at the ring one last time as he steps away, and it’s truly gorgeous, but something about it strikes him as not quite right, whatever that means. Almost—

But the officer teaching the class walks in then, and Shiro puts it out of his mind as he gets back to work and quickly takes the final quizzes over to the students straggling in the door last minute. It’s not really worth spending his time on.

(Maybe, privately, he thinks this because he knows Keith would scoff at the sight of a delicate diamond ring. Maybe.)

So later that night, as he’s pulling out a stack of truly terrible papers from that same ethics class, he sees the name Vera Figner on top of the stack, and a more concrete question finally settles in his mind. What other kinds of engagement rings are out there?

He looks it up. It’s just unattached curiosity and the desire to procrastinate on work—he has no expectations or plans, and Shiro truly, genuinely doesn’t have a particular agenda in mind.

But then he finds out you can buy a ring made of meteorite. And, he’ll admit this to himself but never to Matt, that’s what makes him stop thinking about rings as a general concept. That’s the point where he’s sitting alone in his room, working at his desk, vaguely regretting not snagging a couple of sugar cookies from the cafeteria after dinner. And he thinks instead about putting a ring on Keith’s finger.

It’s just—directed curiosity.

 ***

“So why does Matt keep laughing every time he looks at me?” Keith asks the next night at the gym. He’s spotting Shiro while he lifts, and the question startles Shiro so much he nearly drops the weight over his head.

“Uh,” Shiro says intelligently, looking up at Keith with wide eyes. “I don’t know.”

Keith stares back with a raised eyebrow.

Shiro sighs and shakes his head, starts up his reps again. “He’s just being Matt. Don’t worry about it, he’ll get over it.”

Keith doesn’t seem to have anything to say to that, so Shiro re-focuses his attention on his work out. His arms are aching from how long they’ve been in the gym and his breath is starting to come out as harsh pants instead of a smooth, controlled flow. Wordlessly, Keith helps him lift the bar back onto the rack and Shiro closes his eyes for a minute while his breathing returns to normal. He opens them to Keith’s bemused face staring down at him, standing at Shiro’s shoulder on the side of the bench with his elbows propped up on the bar and half of a grin flickering across his mouth. Shiro’s heart makes a gallant attempt at beating its way out of his chest.

“See something you like?” Keith asks.

Any sort of witty comment dies on Shiro’s tongue as he takes a moment to softly trace Keith’s face and commit it to memory again. As excited as he is about the mission, Shiro hates that the next two years of his life are going to be confined to staring at Keith only in the precious few pictures he has of him and getting to send only the occasional text transmission back to Earth. Matt keeps making grumbled noises about rigging up a better communication system, but so far the known laws of physics are keeping him firmly in line.

“What are you thinking about?” Keith says, lifting a hand to carefully smooth Shiro’s damp bangs away from his forehead.

“The laws of physics,” Shiro says softly, “and the fact that they’re going to be keeping me away from you for the next two years.”

In a rare response, Keith actually blushes; Shiro just catches a flush spreading across his cheeks and the bridge of his nose before Keith snatches his hand back to drop his head into his arms and groan in embarrassment. “You’re the worst,” he whines, refusing to look at Shiro.

Shiro laughs and sits up, glancing furtively around the gym to make sure it's really as empty as he thinks it is, and he swings his legs around so he can pull Keith to him, his hands tugging at Keith’s hips until he finally relents, stepping into the vee of Shiro’s legs. He’s still refusing to look at Shiro, though, head stubbornly tipped up toward the ceiling.

“Baby,” Shiro says, nuzzling his face against Keith’s stomach in a way that he knows Keith thinks is ridiculous and cute in equal parts. He smells faintly like the gym mats they sparred on earlier.

“You’re ridiculous,” Keith says as his hands come up to Shiro’s shoulders, finger tips digging into the hollows right behind his shoulder blades that always get sore after a workout. “What am I going to do with you?”

Shiro hums into the massage and leans back so he can look back up at Keith, glad to find that Keith has finally relented now that the redness is gone from his cheeks. “Keep me around, maybe?” he asks, already back to cataloguing Keith’s face. “I’ll make it worth your while.”

“I think you might need to have a conversation with the laws of physics about that,” Keith says dryly, but his face is gentle and his fingers are softly rubbing up and down the back of Shiro’s neck.

“Maybe they’ll make an exception for us and I’ll come back to spend every night with you.”

Instead of answering, Keith’s head dips down and he presses his lips against Shiro’s just for a moment, as soft as a butterfly’s wings. “You’re sappy today,” Keith whispers against his mouth.

“Excuse you, I’m sappy every day,” Shiro says before he pushes forward, pressing into a long, slow kiss that steals his heart away.

Eventually, Keith pulls back, breathing hard. His hands have come up to cradle Shiro’s face, and his thumb strokes side to side over Shiro’s bottom lip as he presses their foreheads together. “Curfew is soon,” Keith murmurs finally. “We should go shower.”

“Or,” Shiro says lowly, leaning his mouth closer to Keith’s until they’re sharing air, “we could take advantage of the fact that no one else is here.”

“You’re terrible,” Keith says, barely vocalized, and he leans in to capture Shiro in a fierce kiss. It’s rough, unhurried, and Shiro moans low in his throat as Keith crowds closer to him, one knee coming up to rest on the bench next to his hip so they’re pressed together tightly.

Again, he breaks it all too soon, and Shiro curses under his breath, gaze caught on the sight of Keith’s wet, shiny lips curling up into a smirk.

“Come back,” Shiro says, working his fingers through Keith’s hair, grown out slightly from its close-cropped crew cut, so he can reel him back in, but Keith turns his face at the last second. His mouth slides hotly down the line of Shiro’s jaw, teeth nipping at the soft skin just underneath. Shiro is starting to sweat for reasons completely unrelated to the fact that they’ve been at the gym for nearly three hours now.

Eventually, Keith makes it to Shiro’s ear, and it’s all Shiro can do to keep from letting out a full-throated moan when Keith drags his teeth right against the hollow place underneath his ear. He’s playing dirty—he knows exactly what that does to Shiro every single time, and he can only be thankful that he’s already sitting down because his knees are shaking, one hand buried tightly in Keith’s hair and the other grasping desperately at his waist to keep them pressed together.

“You should come shower with me,” Keith whispers, and Shiro nods eagerly. In that moment, he would do just about anything Keith asked of him.

 ***

Shiro makes it back to his room five minutes after curfew with a dark bruise blossoming on the juncture of his neck and shoulder and a dopey smile on his face. He tried to convince Keith to stay the night, but Keith had pointed out that Shiro had an early appointment in the morning and he had no desire to be woken up before six, especially considering that neither of them would get much sleep if he stayed over.

Keith is so smart about these things. Shiro is so in love.

He falls back onto his bed with a sigh and spends a moment contemplating the ceiling in the darkness. His head is filled with thoughts of Keith, images of him laughing over Shiro as he pins him to the training mat, and he replays the sly look Keith had given him when they walked into the locker room and found it just as empty as the gym had been. Briefly, Shiro mentally apologizes to whoever owned the locker he had kept Keith pressed against, but they cleaned up and it’s not like anyone will ever know.

He fishes his PADD out of the nightstand drawer without looking, flopping his hand around until it hits what he’s looking for. He has to squint his eyes against the sudden brightness of the screen as it boots up, the Garrison’s logo flashing at him.

A notification pops up—thirty-two new emails—and he clears it without looking at them, mind already too preoccupied to try to deal with late night requests for extensions and tutoring. He glances furtively at the door, as if somehow he thinks someone (Keith) is going to hack the door lock and let themselves in to try to set their eyes on what he's looking at.

Shiro pulls up the jewelry website he keeps going back to and stares at the tab at the top labeled “Engagement Rings.” Matt's attempt at giving advice, unhelpful as it had been, echoes around his head. He's right—even thinking about this, about proposing to his boyfriend of four months, is absolutely absurd. He and Keith have barely even talked about what's going to happen to their relationship when Shiro leaves because they had been only dating for a month when Shiro got the news.

All the same, a hot, visceral tide of emotion rises in Shiro's stomach every time he thinks about Keith wearing his ring, waiting for him, for two years while Shiro does the same thing on the other side of the solar system. It's possessiveness, yes, but it's longing, too. It's saying that he doesn't care that they're young and reckless because this is more important than doing what's proper or expected—Keith is far more important.

And privately, Shiro thinks even if maybe they didn't work out—even if Keith met someone while Shiro was gone and found the person who really made him happy, happier than Shiro could—that would be okay. Shiro would still want them to have this for as long as possible.

His eyes skip over the price of the rings. They’re expensive, but the advance he received from the Garrison for the Kerberos mission is more than enough to cover the costs without a payment plan. And they’re beautiful—one is a sleek, contrasting band of platinum and titanium joined by a strip of inlaid meteorite. When he looks at the next one, Shiro itches to see the slim black band wrapped around Keith’s finger, but only for maybe a day or two before Keith inevitably realizes that he would much rather wear it on a chain around his neck.

Shiro loses himself in a fantasy, for a minute—imagines himself coming back from Kerberos, stepping off the shuttle right into Keith’s waiting arms. In his imagination, there’s no hesitation or uncertainty, and Keith lifts Shiro’s hand to his lips and presses a kiss there, right in front of everyone, the tenderest gesture. Two years, Shiro will think, and he’ll say with tears in his eyes, “I’m home, baby,” and Keith will haul him in and crush their mouths together like he’s starved for it, and that’s when the photographer snaps the picture that will run with every headline about the return of the Kerberos crew, and—

And maybe Shiro will drop to one knee as soon as Keith lets him breathe. Maybe Shiro won’t have a ring with him like he planned, but he won’t be able to stop himself, so he’ll take both of Keith’s hands in his own and stare up at him helplessly, because Keith is more beautiful than any sight Shiro has seen in their solar system. He won’t really know what to say, but maybe that won’t matter, because Keith will just know. He’ll know.

Maybe all Shiro wants is a happy ending.

Shiro closes the pages, wipes the history, and shuts his PADD off with a decisive tap. He stows it back in the nightstand and gets under the covers, curling onto his side and tapping his fingers absently against the bruise on his neck.

Maybe. Maybe not, but maybe.

 ***

Shiro wakes on Saturday morning to his alarm going off at an awful hour. There’s a meeting for the Kerberos mission at 8 a.m., though it’s beyond him why it was scheduled for such an ungodly time. Keith grumbles in his sleep next to him, but doesn’t wake up. When Shiro sits up and swings his legs out of bed, Keith snuffles and rolls further onto his stomach so he can bury his face deeper into the pillow. Shiro’s heart melts, and he scrambles for his phone to take a quick picture. It’s grainy in the dim light, but he can make out the slightly upturned point of his nose and his half-open mouth.

Shiro spends another moment staring down at him sappily before a thought worms its way to the front of his mind, and he bites his lip, considering. There’s no time like the present. Right?

Slowly, Shiro leans forward so he can slide open the drawer of the bedside table. Every rustle of the blankets or scrape of his hands makes his breath come faster, and he watches Keith’s face like a hawk to make sure that he doesn’t start to wake up. He read an article about this, but he’s not sure if he’ll be able to pull it off without rousing Keith.

He pulls out a pad of green sticky notes and carefully folds one so that it tears easily into a strip that’s only about a centimeter wide with the strip of adhesive on the top. Turning back to Keith, Shiro holds his breath and carefully slides his hand under the sheets to pull Keith’s hand out. Keith’s nose twitches and scrunches up, but he doesn’t pull away, so Shiro leans even closer and gently starts to wrap the paper around Keith’s finger.

Of course, that’s when Keith wakes up.

“Sh’ro?” he grumbles. Shiro freezes, caught, and desperately tries to think of a way out of this.

“I’m just getting up, baby,” he says, attempting to keep his voice soothing.

Keith’s hand twitches and the paper crinkles. “Whassat?”

“Just a note for when you wake up.” So, so carefully, Shiro extracts the paper from his hand and distracts him with a kiss against his fingers. “Go back to sleep, I’ll see you for lunch.”

Sighing, Keith mumbles out something that sounds like an affirmative and sinks back into slumber. Shiro doesn’t dare press his luck, so he quickly whips out a pen and scrawls a quick ‘Study hard! Love you’ with a little smiley face at the bottom and presses it on the pillow next to Keith’s face.

Shiro must still look vaguely haunted by the time he showers, dresses, and makes his way over to the meeting room, hoping that this is one of those meetings where they provide huge carafes of coffee and plates of donuts and fruit.

“What the hell happened to you?” Matt says. He’s waiting for Shiro outside the room where his father is gathered with a couple other senior officers.

“I don’t want to tell you,” Shiro grumbles at him.

“Did lover boy not give you a good morning kiss before you left today?”

Shiro shushes Matt quickly before someone hears. “Shut up.

“Shirooooo,” Matt whines, throwing his arms around Shiro’s shoulders and clinging to him. “I need to know.” He attempts to shake Shiro from side to side. “C’mon, you’re my best friend, my man, you gotta tell me.”

This is so stupid. Shiro knows it’s stupid, but he’s seriously considering telling Matt the truth. Matt, who can and will make fun of him until literally his last breath. Their entire relationship was founded on snarky comments and creating chaos and this is exactly the kind of drama that Matt loves to mock him for.

Whatever. In for a penny, and all that.

“Keith woke up while I was trying to measure his ring size this morning,” Shiro says in one quick breath. “Please be quiet about it.”

Matt’s face goes through some truly intense contortions as he brings both hands up to cover his mouth. “No,” he says.

“Yes. I played it off so I don’t think he knows, but for the record, I’m blaming you for making all of this happen.”

“This is so not my fault,” Matt says. “But man, I wish it was.”

“I was just looking before you came along and put all these actual ideas in my head,” Shiro argues, but his heart isn’t in it. He rakes one hand through his hair in frustration. “Fuck, this is just distracting me from everything important that’s actually going on in my life right now.”

“Thinking about getting married is way more important than another meeting about the fucking launch day ceremonies,” Matt says. Shiro doesn’t completely disagree with him, even though he knows he should. “Don’t worry, though. I’ve got your back here.”

“Wait,” Shiro says, realizing his mistake. “Matt, no, you can’t get involved, okay?”

But Matt is already giving him finger guns and sliding through the half open door into the meeting room, a shit-eating grin on his face. The fucker.

Shiro takes a minute to compose himself by staring hard at the ceiling and trying to do that thing his old yoga teacher taught him about setting intentions, but right now, the only intention he can think of is strangling Matthew Holt so he can’t do anything else to Shiro’s life.

***

“So what was this meeting about?” Keith asks once they’ve all sat down to lunch, him and Shiro on one side of the cafeteria table and Matt across from them. It’s their normal seating position, but Matt keeps smirking randomly. Shiro is going to develop a twitch.

Shiro says, “Mostly it was about scheduling and the intensive training we have to go through two weeks before launch. It isn’t what I expected.”

“What, don’t they just stick you in a zero-G suit for two weeks and then say let’s go?”

“I’m pretty sure half the shit on there is just because Iverson is an asshole and wants us to suffer, I’m not gonna lie,” Matt says.

Keith looks confused. “Like what?”

“We have survival training, for one,” Shiro says. “But it’s not wilderness survival, it’s similar to the training covert ops go through. I don’t know how useful it’s going to be while we’re on a frozen rock, but Iverson actually called me an idiot when I pointed that out.”

Keith laughs. “Didn’t he used to be a spy or something?”

“I think so; it’s probably why he’s so paranoid about it.”

Matt shrugs as he chews on a giant bite of baked chicken. “But there’s a lot of other stuff too, like first aid and engineering. We don’t really have a dedicated mechanic on board, so I’m going to be the main expert on that because I took a lot of engineering classes. Shiro and dad will be able to help, though.”

“That’s cool,” Keith says.

“Yeah, I texted my sister to tell her that I’m head engineer and she’s so mad. She keeps telling me I should take her with us so someone with a brain can be in charge of that,” Matt says, laughing. “Dad told me I gotta get her a present before we leave. I’m thinking about getting her jewelry or something.”

“How old is she?” Shiro always forgets that Keith has yet to meet the infamous Katie Holt, possibly the one person in the universe who’s smarter than both her dad and brother. It’s actually a little terrifying to think about her and Keith becoming friends.

“Ugh, don’t make me think about it. She just turned fifteen, and she’s totally brilliant already.” Matt sighs. “Have you seen those decoder rings they make? I was gonna save that for her birthday or something but then I realized I’m not gonna be around for the next two birthdays, y’know?”

Keith’s mouth twists wryly. Shiro doesn’t think Keith notices the way he shifts closer until their thighs are pushed up against each other underneath the table.

“That sounds perfect for Katie,” Shiro says softly. Carefully, he puts a hand on Keith’s thigh just above his knee.

Totally oblivious to the sadness that’s settled over Keith, Matt continues. “The only problem I’m having is I have no idea what size ring she is.” He sighs, looking troubled for a minute. Shiro can’t describe the certain dread that comes over him when he sees Matt’s eyes flash, but it’s too late to do anything. His best fucking friend is about to betray him. Shiro curses his life.

“Say, Keith, you have pretty small hands,” Matt says in the most fake innocent tone. Keith actually looks mildly offended. “What ring size would you say you are?”

***

Shiro heads into town after lunch to run errands while Keith studies for a sim test. Usually they go together, but this time Keith had pressed a kiss to the side of Shiro’s head once they got back to Shiro’s room and told him to have a fun afternoon while Keith got his work done without any distractions, the mood mostly recovered after Matt’s idiocy.

“Are you calling me a distraction?” Shiro teases, leaning into Keith.

“Hmm,” Keith says, and he looks up under his lashes and runs a hand down Shiro’s chest to stop just above the button of his pants. “Something about you.”

In the end, it takes Shiro an extra twenty minutes to get out to the hangar where his hover bike is, but he leaves the Garrison feeling a lot lighter than he had waking up that morning.

He hits the grocery store first, stocking up on Keith’s disgusting junk foods and his own clearly superior ones. A walk-in appointment at the barber’s only takes about twenty minutes to get his sides and neck touched up, and then somehow he’s standing in front of a jewelry store.

This is a terrible idea.

Fucking Matt Holt is the reason Shiro now knows his boyfriend’s ring size.

Shiro hovers in the doorway for longer than is probably polite to the salespeople eyeing him from inside, but eventually he gathers his strength by reminding himself that he is, in fact, an adult, and is allowed to walk inside of a jewelry store with no ulterior motives.

“What can I help you with today, sir?” a salesperson asks as Shiro approaches the first jewelry case.

“Um,” he says, scanning the rings presented there. They’re all very . . . delicate and thin, like if you hit someone in the jaw while wearing one, it would break under the force. “I’m looking for a ring. Uh, thinking about looking for a ring. Something—less sparkly?” He waves his hands vaguely at the case, not sure how to explain that if he’s going to seriously consider buying a ring, it needs to be able to withstand a fistfight.

“An engagement ring, sir?”

Shiro flushes red from the top of his forehead all the way down to his feet and scratches the back of his head awkwardly. Somewhere back at the Garrison, Matt is probably laughing his ass off suddenly for no apparent reason as he picks up on Shiro’s embarrassment from seventy miles away. “Uh, I guess so.”

“Over this way.”

Shuffling awkwardly to the back of the shop, Shiro finds himself in front of a display of more plain bands. He stares down at them, uncertain.

“Have you considered what color metal you want?”

“Black,” he says without hesitation. “Or dark gray, maybe, but he likes wearing black.”

The jeweler unlocks the back of the case and slides out a selection of rings placed in a velvet tray to place them on the glass countertop between them. “Tell me a little bit about your partner, perhaps, and we can start from there?”

But Shiro is already shaking his head, eyes landing on a pattern he recognizes only because he’s been staring at it online for weeks. “Tell me about that one,” he says, pointing to it. The salesperson’s mouth twists in a way that might be judgement, but Shiro doesn’t really care.

“This one,” they say, plucking the ring out and holding it up to Shiro, “is a titanium band with a textured meteorite inlay.”

Shiro only spends about forty-five minutes in the store, ostensibly looking at rings he’s not planning to buy while his mind runs circles around the fact that he’s buying his boyfriend of four months an engagement ring.

He doesn’t know if it’s instinct or impulse, if there’s a higher power guiding his actions or just his own determination, but he sees a ring—the ring—and something inside him settles, like a box teetering on the edge of its shelf has been pushed back into place. He leaves the store, wallet a couple thousand dollars lighter, and the little black box in his right jacket pocket feels like it’s burning.

 ***

Shiro gets back to the Garrison mid-afternoon. He stops by his room to drop off the junk food, toiletries, and other assorted things, and then has to exercise every bit of his strength of will to keep from sprinting straight to Matt’s room down the hall. He only manages to hold himself back for fifteen minutes of staring at the ceiling above his bed.

“Matt,” he says lowly, knocking on the door. “Matt, I really need to talk to you, please be home.”

The door slides open with a hiss. It’s dark inside, heavy curtains drawn over the windows despite the fact that it’s beautiful and sunny out today, and Matt is hunched over his computer, a blanket thrown over his shoulders like a cape. The overhead light is dimmed down to its lowest possible setting. Matt nods briefly at Shiro in greeting, says, “Give me a sec,” and proceeds to type at a rate that Shiro secretly believes is humanly impossible, with the acknowledgement that every single one of the Holts that he’s met could reasonably be part robot.

Shiro sits on the bed and waits anxiously.

“Okay,” Matt finally says, spinning around dramatically in his chair to face Shiro. “What’s up? You look like you’re about to vomit, please go back to your room if you’re going to do that.”

He takes a deep breath. “Don’t freak out,” Shiro warns.

Matt cocks his head to one side. “Okay, I’ll admit I’m mildly concerned now. What did you do?”

Wordlessly, Shiro pulls his hand out of his coat pocket and unclenches his fingers from around the box to hold it out to Matt, watching his face slingshot wildly from confusion to maniacal glee.

“Oh my god. Holy shit, oh my god.” Matt snatches the box out of his hands and flips it open, jaw dropping open before a look of complete and absolute triumph flashes over his face. “I can’t believe it! I knew it, the whole time, and you told me I was wrong. I set this up for you today, you should be fucking writing me into your will right now.”

Shiro laughs halfheartedly and settles his chin in his hands. “What d’you think?”

“Well, this is really nice—meteorite here, right?” Matt leans back towards his computer and holds the ring up in the light. “What metal is it?”

“Titanium.”

Matt snorts. “Of course it is.”

The tips of Shiro’s ears burn, but he says, “I thought he might like that.” He absolutely tried not to think about the symbolism when he bought it, but it was so incredibly obvious that it was a lost cause to ignore—titanium is the strongest metal, after all, and it makes up most of the ship that will take him to Kerberos. Mildly sentimental, but Shiro hopes it's not overly so.

“Oh, he’s gonna like it,” Matt says. “Hell, if he doesn’t I might beg for your hand myself, Shiro, damn. This is nice. And surprisingly meaningful for someone as dense as yourself.”

“Hey,” Shiro says mildly, but doesn’t really bother to defend himself. “Are you going to tell me I’m nuts again?”

“You’re absolutely nuts, but it sounds like you already know that.” Matt goes quiet for a second as he places the ring back in its box and closes it gently. “That’s not the question I know you want to ask me.”

Shiro huffs, takes the ring box back, and flips it open to run his thumb over the smooth metal. “Do you really think he’ll say yes?” he asks, hating how small his voice sounds.

Matt sighs heavily. “Aw, hell, Shiro, don’t get all maudlin on me now, you’re supposed to be cooler than this.” He gets up from his chair and sits next to Shiro on the bed, throwing one arm around his shoulders. “You and Keith have been weirdly perfect for each other since the day you set eyes on his scrawny little shoulders back when we were all but wee cadets.”

“They’re not scrawny,” Shiro protests, though he’s not above admitting privately to himself that he loves the way Keith’s body is so much more compact than his own.

“Love is blind,” Matt drawls, elbowing Shiro to shut him up. “What I’m trying to say is that you two, no matter who else is in the room or who you’re trying to pay attention to, have your own little orbital pattern going on. Everyone knows about it, too, because you idiots are literally the opposite of subtle. So of course he’s going to say yes. I already told you, he has little hearts in his eyes every second you two are so much as in the same building as each other. It’s absolutely disgusting; if I wasn’t already your best friend I’d drop you in a second.”

Shiro stares at him for a second before bursting out laughing. “Did you just threaten to break up with me?”

“Hell yeah I did, you deserve to know the limits of my love,” Matt says, collapsing dramatically back onto the messy covers. “You wanna hang out until dinner?

Shiro throws himself back on Matt’s bed in response. Somewhere between laughing about their escapades as second-year cadets and spit balling ideas about how to subtly drive Matt’s dad crazy while they’re all up in space together, Shiro’s eyelids grow heavy and he gives into sleep.

He wakes to the frantic, hyped up clacking of Matt’s computer keys, a comforting sound that harkens back to their days as sleep-deprived cadets when they used to do exactly this before dinner almost every day. Except the beds were a lot smaller and the mattresses thinner, so Shiro is happy to report that life does actually get better after graduation, even if the cafeteria food is still nearly unbearable.

His phone vibrates underneath him, and he lifts his hips up to dig it out of his back pocket.

 _Dinner?_ the text from Keith reads.

_waiting for matt, should be 30 mins_

_I’m coming over before I kill my roommate._

Shiro raises his eyebrows at that, and says to Matt, “Keith’s coming over. He’s having another fight with his roommate.”

“Better give me the ring,” he says.

Shiro hesitates for a minute just to roll the box around in his hands one more time before he throws it to Matt and watches him squirrel it away in one of his desk drawers, hidden under some sort of tool set that Shiro isn’t sure the function of.

“My lips are sealed,” Matt says, winking at him before pulling his blanket more securely around his shoulders and returning his attention to his work. He doesn’t even glance up when Shiro gets up to answer Keith’s knock at the door.

 


	2. gemini 3 // march 23, 2078

Shiro spends the next week and a half lost in an overwhelming whirlwind of activity as preparations for the Kerberos mission ramp up in earnest—there are now only three months left until launch, and the brutal schedule for the crew is packed full of meetings, examinations, press conferences, training simulations, and everything else under the sun. Plus, Shiro is, somehow, still a fully and gainfully employed teaching assistant at the Garrison’s school.

After a fully packed Tuesday, Shiro’s brain is dragging and he’s hardly seen Keith all week except for a few mostly silent study sessions and the handful of times Keith slept in his room. He sits alone at dinner that night, a yawn cracking his jaw as he tries to keep his eyes open long enough to shovel a plate of something into his mouth.

Sleep claims him deeply when his head hits the pillow that night, and he dreams of flying.

He’s on the plane that took him to America for the first time, feeling alone and sitting next to the woman who looks like the picture his grandparents kept of his mother. He wishes, later, that this, being his first time flying, could be more poetically significant in predicting the trajectory of his life. Unfortunately, there’s not much to it, like the sudden birth of an all-consuming love of piloting or a desire to reach the stars. As it is Takashi is sad. Even though he’s always wanted to fly in a plane, the concept of sitting in the window seat thirty thousand feet above the Pacific Ocean isn’t enough to rouse his interest today.

The cabin is dimly lit; the backs of the seats have little touch screens built into them that repeat the same ten minute string of advertisements at him, first in Japanese and then in English, over and over again. He wants to turn it off, but his aunt smiles unhappily and says there is no way to make the lights stop flashing at you.

“You can see the clouds out the window,” she says, touching his shoulder gently.

He looks, and what he sees aren’t clouds or an ocean. The water is dark, almost black, like a chasm has opened up so wide in the Earth that Takashi can’t see to either end of it, and the clouds don’t look like the fluffy cotton balls he had always imagined. They’re thin, mostly, like spun sugar, and nothing pretty to look at to distract him from the yawning ocean. In that moment, Takashi fears the ocean reaching out to swallow him up.

“Takashi,” Aunt Tomoko says. Her voice is gentle; everything about her has been gentle since she arrived in Japan two weeks ago, barely a days after the deaths of his grandparents.

He’s crying, he realizes.

“Can I hug you?” she asks.

Truthfully, he doesn’t know if a hug would help him at this point, but he gets the sense that it would help her, and that’s a good enough to reason to nod and watch her undo her seatbelt so she can put her arms around him properly.

Maybe it runs in the family, he thinks, these bony shoulders that can make a hug uncomfortable if there isn’t the right amount of love in it. His grandmother’s hugs had been just like that—except Takashi never felt uncomfortable. Now, he doesn’t know what to feel.

But something inside him still craves that feeling of warm love, so he buries his face in his aunt’s shoulder and clutches at her shirt in vain. She rocks him, holds the back of his head in one hand, and hums a slow, wordless melody that settles right down into his bones. The moment flows like honey, slow and sweet, and for the first time in days, when he closes his eyes, he doesn’t see lifeless eyes or bodies, just a welcoming blankness that draws him in like an old friend.

His aunt holds on until he starts to let go. The first thing she does is pull a tissue out of her bag and pat at the tear tracks on Shiro’s cheeks, just like his grandfather used to do.

“My dad always did this for me when I cried,” she tells him. “I’m sure he did it for you, too.” Takashi nods, a lump in his throat. “And now I do it for my children.”

Her warm eyes are comforting. Takashi wishes he could have known her sooner, without the grief in the way.

“You don’t have to say anything,” she says after a beat, voice hesitant. “But I’ve wanted to tell you—I know that you don’t really know me or my family. I remember when you were born eight years ago, and I’ve seen you grow up in pictures my parents sent me. I know we’ve talked a little bit when I call home. You need to know that I’m going to take care of you, Takashi. I wish—I wish I didn’t have to take you from Japan because I know it’s your home. But my parents always thought it was better to be with family, and I’m going to try my damn hardest to be that family you need.”

By the time she’s done talking, Takashi is crying again. This time, when she spreads her arms open for him, he doesn’t hesitate. Never in his life has he ever felt so alone, even sandwiched onto a plane with two hundred other passengers, but he’s so young and he just wants someone to tell him it’s going to be all right.

***

Shiro wakes after a blessedly high number of hours of sleep. Surprisingly little sunlight streams through his window where he forgot to draw the blinds last night, leading him to think that it’s not quite morning anymore. The last hazy threads of his dreams slip away from him—it’s not the first time he’s re-lived long-gone moments in vivid, anxiously oversaturated dreams, so he’s not that concerned with holding on to them.

He yawns widely without bothering to lift his head from the pillow as his eyes track sleepily over his room. Keith’s boots are stacked next to his at the door, so that means—

Shiro’s heart jumps at the sight of Keith asleep when he rolls over to face the side of the bed that’s pushed up against the wall. His dream is forgotten for the way Keith is sprawled out with his face tilted toward Shiro, blankets thrown off, and mouth hanging open just slightly. Reaching out with one hand to brush Keith’s bangs away from his eyes, Shiro marvels at the idea that Keith and his horrendous bedhead fit so comfortably into Shiro’s space, into his life. He has no idea how Keith even ended up in his room, but it doesn’t matter. Already, the last few days feel like they’re a million miles away, and he just wants to bask in this feeling.

Shiro rolls toward the center of the bed and wriggles down so he can press his face against Keith’s warm stomach, breathing in the scent of him, sleepy and soft, wearing a loose T-shirt he obviously stole out of Shiro’s dresser when he came in last night. He dozes for an indeterminable amount of time, slipping back into consciousness only when he starts to feel Keith’s fingers scratching gently at his scalp.

“Hi, baby,” he mumbles. It’s not exactly coherent, but Keith seems to get the message.

Somehow, they move to kissing, to Shiro pressing Keith down into the bed, to Keith digging his nails into Shiro’s shoulders, face scrunched up in a moan that Shiro has to quiet with his mouth so no one can hear him through the thin walls.

“Wait,” Shiro says suddenly, breathless, tearing himself away and leveraging his arms up so he’s hovering over Keith, who looks grumpy that he’s suddenly so far away. “Don’t you have class today?”

Keith gives him a strange look. “Shiro, it’s spring break.”

“Oh.” Shiro blinks. He remembers Keith being busy, and him being busy, but somehow he never fully connected the fact that this quarter’s finals were going on simultaneously. “How were your finals?”

Shrugging his shoulders a little, Keith says, “They were fine. You already asked, by the way.”

“I’m sorry,” Shiro says sincerely. He tries to be especially attentive to Keith during finals, always has since his first year, because they stress him out so much.

Keith just laughs though, and he pushes Shiro’s hair out of his eyes tenderly. “Takashi, I know you haven’t been sleeping. Don’t worry about it.”

Studying him for a moment, Shiro lowers himself back down until their noses are brushing. Desire starts to burn low in his belly. He has to cross his eyes a little to stay focused on Keith’s face. “So you’re telling me,” he says hopefully, “that neither of us has any particular responsibilities today . . . and you’re in my bed, wearing one of my T-shirts, and neither of us is planning to change any of this in the near future?”

“I don’t know,” Keith says. “I was hoping to get rid of the T-shirt.”

Shiro stares at him for a beat before growling out, “You are the worst,” and he presses past the rest of the distance between them.

Keith sighs into his mouth softly, lips parting as Shiro presses one hand to his cheek so he can tilt Keith's head the way he wants and lick slowly into his mouth. Shiro can hardly remember the last time it was just the two of them like this, like nothing else in the world mattered, and he tries to pour all of that frustration and longing into the kiss. Keith arches beautifully beneath him, and Shiro loses himself in the soft feeling of their lips sliding across each other, in the playful nips Keith gives as he teases at Shiro’s bottom lip with his teeth.

It grows heated and desperate until Keith stops touching Shiro for a moment, which is terrible, especially when he starts pushing back at Shiro’s shoulders. Shiro whines as he backs away and falls to the side, about to complain about being separated again only to watch Keith twist out of the thin white T-shirt and toss it somewhere off the bed.

“You have the best ideas,” Shiro sighs as he pulls Keith back into his arms, Keith naked and Shiro left only in his boxers and—

“Nope, take your goddamn socks off, Shirogane,” Keith says, slapping a hand over Shiro’s mouth as he tries to kiss him again. “I won’t stand for this.”

“Just because you don’t appreciate having warm feet,” Shiro says, shaking his head as he toes his socks off and kicks them off the bed. “Am I acceptable now?”

“Just finish the job already, jeez,” Keith says, laughter coloring his tone.

So Shiro hooks his thumbs in the waistband of his boxers with a bemused smile on his face and pulls them off too, and when he’s finally free of them, Keith pushes him back down with a hand on his chest and straddles his hips, just above where Shiro would really rather have him sitting.

He looks unfairly good like this, hair still mussed from sleep but his eyes are sharp and mischievous, light glinting off of them at a weird angle that always makes Shiro wonder for a moment if his eyes are actually purple and not just a deep gray, more blue than the steely shade of Shiro’s own. Shiro tells him this, and Keith raises an unimpressed eyebrow at him. He’s tracing some sort of pattern across Shiro’s chest, fingers pressing just this side of too hard to be ticklish, and looks like he’s calculating something that’s going to make Shiro’s heart pound halfway out of his chest.

Keith leans down to press a soft, teasing kiss to Shiro’s mouth, just barely scraping his teeth over the edge of Shiro’s jaw on the withdrawal, and Shiro’s cock twitches. Slowly, Keith’s hand slides up to bury itself in Shiro’s hair as he leans into a deeper kiss, pushing into Shiro’s mouth like he’s never even thought about questioning his welcome. His nails scratch lightly at Shiro’s skull, and Shiro moans at the feeling.

Shiro grips at his waist desperately, giving back everything he’s got and kissing Keith like he’s trying to make this last forever. It gets wetter and hotter as Keith pushes forward even more insistently, and it’s all Shiro can do to keep up with him when half of his brain is distracted by the hand squeezing his bicep and sliding down his forearm to drag Shiro’s hand further down Keith’s body until his fingers are digging into Keith’s ass. Shiro rolls his hips up, but there’s nothing for him to catch on to find friction because Keith is maddeningly settled just above his hipbones.

Suddenly it stops as Keith pulls back. Shiro drags his eyes open just in time to catch the ravenous look on Keith’s face, and then the hand still laced through his hair tightens suddenly and pulls, yanking his head to the side. Shiro gasps, mouth fluttering open as Keith’s mouth descends onto his neck, sucking and biting almost violently just at the line of skin where his uniform collar ends. It’s Keith’s favorite spot because it’s technically low enough to hide, but right at the edge where if Shiro bends his neck a certain way or you look down the side of his collar, there’s clearly a darkened bruise there.

“Fuck—Keith,” Shiro chokes out, and he means to continue, but the pressure intensifies, and he groans instead at the pain. “Shit, baby, yeah.”

Keith’s wicked mouth presses one last hot kiss to the abused spot there, and then kisses his way slowly back up Shiro’s neck, free hand coming up so he can press two fingers into the new bruise blooming into being. Shiro chokes on the moan that tumbles from his throat.

Keith hovers above him, grin almost maniacal. “You like that?” he says. His lips are swollen red, and Shiro can only imagine what he looks like himself, chest heaving in excitement as Keith takes him apart.

“What do you think?” Shiro says between panting breaths. “Come back here.”

He crushes their mouths together, licking deep into Keith’s mouth until they’re practically fighting each other. Keith’s pressing every advantage he has to keep Shiro down, fingers flicking at his nipples and grinding one lean thigh into Shiro’s dick, but finally Shiro breaks, snarling, and shoves Keith over, flipping them and covering Keith with his entire body. The realization is finally washing over him that he’s barely touched Keith in two weeks, too wrapped up in work, and he needs to remedy that, to take Keith and make every part of him his, until they’re so desperately bound up in each other that it feels like they were never less than one unified being.

As Shiro kisses him roughly, Keith whimpers brokenly into his mouth, just barely, a sound he would never admit to on pain of death, and his legs come up to wrap around Shiro’s hips like that’s what he was after all along.

“Is that what you wanted?” Shiro pants into his ear. “Wanted me to pin you down and make sure you couldn’t get out from under me?” He shoves his hips down, and Keith cries out, eyes squeezed shut as he arches up.

“I can still—” Keith says, and Shiro can feel where his body is tensing to roll them over again, but he stops it, grabbing Keith by the elbows and wrenching his arms down to the bed. They both pause, staring at each other and breathing hard.

Finally, Shiro noses down, pressing the words, “I win,” straight into Keith’s open mouth as his hands slide up Keith’s strong arms to pull his wrists over his head. Keith bucks up into him, but this time he isn’t trying to get away, he’s just begging for Shiro to touch him, so he traps one of Keith’s wrists under the other, presses them down with one hand, and slides his other hand down to wrap around Keith’s cock, stroking him so lightly that Keith snarks at him, “Are you actually going to touch me at any point?”

“I’m touching you all over,” Shiro murmurs, kissing the base of Keith’s throat. “Am I missing something?”

“Such a jackass,” Keith says, but he returns Shiro’s kiss like he’s starving for it. “Don’t know why—why everyone thinks you’re so great, since you can’t even—”

Shiro decides that he doesn’t want to hear Keith goad him into making this go his way, so he pulls the hand away from stroking Keith’s cock and instead clamps it down over Keith's mouth to silence him and keep the words locked in his throat. Keith's nails dig deeply into his shoulder for just a second, and Shiro pulls his hand back slightly, just enough to press two fingers into Keith's mouth, sliding over his tongue until he’s gagged but not quite silent. Shiro stares down at him, waiting for Keith’s eyes to flicker open and he can make a face to say _is this okay?_ Keith moans loudly and licks at the pads of Shiro's fingers, welcoming them deeper inside.

“That’s more like it,” he says, voice deep and quiet, and he resumes grinding his hips into Keith at a leisurely pace, slotting together for the perfect friction.

Keith moans again, and Shiro feels it vibrate through his chest. He fucks his fingers into Keith’s mouth at the same rhythm as his rolling hips, admiring both the way Keith’s mouth looks stretched slack and accepting around Shiro’s fingers and how his eyes keep falling shut despite how hard Keith is fighting to keep them open.

“Do you like that, baby?” Shiro asks, and Keith groans loudly in agreement, hips bucking up to rub against Shiro’s with increasing desperation. “Yeah, come on, come for me, honey, I wanna see you.”

Shiro can feel the growing warmth of his orgasm creeping up from deep inside of him, but he refuses to give in until Keith has come all over himself between them, so he makes his grip around Keith’s wrists bruisingly tight as he grinds his hips down and slides his fingers inside so deep Keith almost chokes, a high pitched moan bursting from his chest. Keith’s back arches up and his heels dig into Shiro’s back and thigh as he comes, a slew of broken noises falling out of his mouth as Shiro pushes him through it.

“So good, so good for me, yes—fuck—” Shiro grunts as the world finally whites out behind his eyes. He buries his face in Keith’s neck, moaning his name in one drawn out breath and shakes through it.

As he comes down, he starts to release Keith, softening his grip incrementally as he regains control of himself and manages to roll off to the side. Keith’s eyes are still closed as he pants into the air between them, and it’s only then that Shiro realizes neither of them bothered to brush their teeth this morning.

He pulls Keith in until his head is nestled under Shiro’s chin, and they lie together like that, catching their breath. Shiro’s fingers card through Keith’s hair, and Keith strokes at his side gently.

“Was that okay?” Shiro finally rumbles out.

Keith’s voice is slightly hoarse when he speaks, like his mouth has been wrapped around Shiro’s dick and not just his fingers, and Shiro has to suppress a small whimper of appreciation for the way it makes his voice husky. “That was—really okay,” he says into Shiro’s collarbone. “You ever want to do that again, just let me know.”

Shiro smiles at that. “Can do.”

Quietly they gather themselves, Shiro rescuing his boxers from where they’re hanging half off the bed, and he does his best to wipe both of them off before he pulls Keith back to him. Their legs slide together, and Shiro just appreciates the softness of Keith’s skin at the base of his spine, brain floating in a post-orgasmic haze of happiness. It’s augmented only by the knowledge that he can spend the whole day just like this.

They doze for god knows how long, drifting in and out of sleep until Shiro can’t tell the difference between the soft warmth of sleep and reality. Keith only moves to tug the comforter over their hips, shielding them from the cool nip of the air conditioning.

Suddenly, Keith sits up from where he’s tangled with Shiro and looks down at him with an affronted glare. “You distracted me,” he accuses.

Jerked out of a lazy, indulgent daydream about paying Matt to order and deliver a pizza straight to his door while Keith languishes naked in his bed all day, Shiro’s eyes flick down his chest and back up. “Sorry?” he asks, shrugging and grinning stupidly.

“I have plans,” Keith says—whines, really. Altogether, it’s very indignant and incredibly cute.

“Are they out of bed plans?”

Keith levels him with an assessing look. “They are.”

Shiro pretends to think it over. “Why don’t you tell me about them and I’ll try my best to convince you that you actually just want to spend all day in bed with your boyfriend, who has no meetings today?”

That catches Keith’s interest. “No meetings?” he asks dubiously, leaning over Shiro to stare right into his eyes.

“I was supposed to have one this morning, but I moved it so I could spend a day with you,” Shiro says smugly. “ _And_ I don’t need to grade any papers today, since it’s spring break.” He reaches up to pull Keith further down, until their faces are so close that all Shiro can see are his narrowed eyes.

“No one’s going to come looking for you?”

Shiro shakes his head. “I’m on vacation today, baby. I’m all yours.”

“Hm,” Keith says. A hand lands on Shiro’s stomach and strokes upward to his sternum, lingering on the warm skin underneath. Keith’s eyes are no longer narrowed in suspicion, but heavy-lidded with desire as he contemplates. The promise of one long, luxurious day together is enough to ramp the heat back up between them, and Shiro licks his lips unconsciously.

Finally, Keith says, “Fine. But only because we don’t have plans until after dinner. Now roll over, I wanna be on top this time.”

Shiro blinks. “What?” But while he might be mildly confused, he stops complaining once Keith pushes his shoulder over and climbs on top of him with a wicked grin. He’s not an idiot.

***

Somehow, a half hour after dinner (pizza, ordered in—Shiro didn’t pay Matt to bring it to them but in fact put on enough clothing to go and fetch it himself), Shiro is showered and dressed and walking willingly out of his room, and he’s not even entirely sure how Keith accomplished that. He stops to glance longingly at his rumpled bed sheets, his aunt’s handmade quilt shoved to the floor to avoid an unfortunate accident, and he quietly mourns.

“I can’t believe you’re making me get out of bed. Making us get out of bed,” he says, but he does not whine, because Shiro is both a grown man and an officer. Keith isn’t buying it.

“I don’t think you’re actually suffering.”

“Oh, I’m suffering.”

Keith doesn’t bother to answer him that time.

They troop back over to Keith’s tiny closet of a room. It’s just as messy and cramped as Shiro remembers—he makes a point not to come here very often, partly because a lot of his students are Keith’s neighbors who might talk and partly because his own room is, frankly, just so much better. Keith doesn’t even pretend to disagree on that fact. Between the larger bed, the lack of a roommate, and the window that takes up an entire wall instead of a one foot by six inch square near the top of the ceiling, Shiro is practically living in Garrison luxury.

Keith gathers up an already packed duffle bag, and then he’s tugging Shiro by the wrist out the door. Shiro carefully separates their hands with a sigh, and he follows Keith all the way to the garage where Shiro’s hoverbike lives.

“Keys,” Keith says, holding out his hand imperiously, and Shiro hands them over, bemused at his tone of expectation and the secrecy of this entire operation.

They drive out of the gates into the desert at a normal, safe pace, but once they’ve cleared the dunes that hide the Garrison behind them, Keith leans forward and opens it up until they’re whipping across the sand, dust billowing out behind them in the fading light of the day. Shiro clings to Keith, arms wrapped around his waist, and he settles into the knowledge that he doesn’t care where they’re going, as long as they’re going together.

***

“How did you find this place?” Shiro asks, marveling at the dark landscape below him. The canyon is lit by the waxing moon behind them, just enough to illuminate the peaks and crags of the rocky horizon, and beyond that, the brilliant sky.

Keith steps up behind him and hooks his chin over Shiro’s shoulder. “I’ve known about it for a while, but I’ve never come out here to stargaze before. I knew you would like it.”

“It’s beautiful.”

“There’s—I have something else, too,” Keith says hesitantly. “The reason I actually brought you out here.”

“Oh?” Shiro turns and wraps him in his arms. “It wasn’t just to ravage me under the stars with no one around for miles to hear us?”

“We can do that,” Keith says, shrugging one shoulder nonchalantly. “But it’s actually—I should just show you.”

So Keith steps back to spread a blanket on the ground and pulls a telescope out of his backpack. Shiro doesn’t have the faintest clue what’s going through Keith’s head right now that’s making him look so nervous. But Shiro’s almost regretting leaving that ring with Matt, because the longer he stands here watching Keith set up the telescope, the more he thinks that this could have been his moment.

“Here,” Keith says, patting the ground next to him where he settles with the telescope in front of him. Shiro follows his lead, and he leans back to keep looking at the sky while Keith presses his eye to the telescope to find whatever it is he’s looking for.

“In 1965,” Keith starts, “was the first manned Gemini launch. Gemini 3.”

“You brought me out here for a history lesson?” Shiro asks, laughing. It’s so like Keith—he loves flying, of course, but when you dig down and get to the bottom of him, he’s really just a huge nerd; he has great fat books stored under his bed detailing the history of human flight, theoretical overviews of faster than light travel, sprawling epics about adventuring across the universe—he loves all of it. Keith is a veritable explosion of information when he gets going, and Shiro adores him for it.

“No, be quiet,” Keith says. He finally pulls back from the telescope, looking satisfied. “Gemini 3 wasn’t the first time someone went to space, but it was the first time someone really piloted in space—they used thrusters to change the shape of their orbit.” Keith looks at him, eyes sparkling in the moonlight. “They made history.”

He pulls Shiro in to look through the telescope finally, and what he sees makes his breath catch. He would recognize that pale little dot anywhere from all the pictures he’s seen of it over the last year.

“Keith . . . .” he whispers. Shiro grabs Keith’s hand and holds on tight.

“I know we haven’t talked about what we’re going to do when you leave,” Keith says. His voice keeps getting quieter. “But I wanted you to know that I—I want this. You. And part of who you are is the future pilot of the first manned mission to Pluto. And I mean—look, it’s not going to be easy, but I’m not giving up. You never gave up on me, so I can’t either.”

Shiro is crying, he realizes. He sniffs and scrubs his free hand down his face quickly, shakes his hair out of his eyes. “I don’t want to give up either,” he says, looking Keith dead in the eye.

“Good.” Keith’s smile is raw, and Shiro can see the strain there.

This mission is terrifying, because no matter what, Shiro and the Holts are definitely going down in history for the work they’re doing, but it’s indescribably dangerous. The farthest humanity has gone is one orbit of Jupiter and three landings on two of Jupiter’s moons. The thought of Pluto is exciting and went beyond expectations when the project was first proposed, but there are millions of things that could go wrong. Shiro is completely responsible for landing on and taking off from Kerberos—and at a little more than five light hours away, any communication they get from Earth won’t have any chance to help them if something goes sideways in those crucial moments.

So much can go wrong. But if it all goes right—and it should, it should go right—they’ll not only be heroes back on Earth, but they’ll have scientific data that has the potential to change the course of human history forever.

Not that Shiro feels any of the pressure.

“I’m terrified of not getting to come back to you,” Shiro admits once he’s turned back to the telescope. He holds Keith’s hand in a death grip. “Not because we break up, but because something might happen to me out there.”

Keith leans his forehead against Shiro’s shoulder blade. Shiro can hardly see Pluto anymore because his eyes are blurred with tears. “I know you can do it,” Keith says fiercely. “There’s no one else they even want in that pilot seat, Takashi, because you’re the best goddamn pilot they’ve got. And you’re going to get there, and come back, and they won’t even know what to say to you because you’ll have done something so amazing it’s going to change history.”

“I love you,” Shiro breathes.

“I love you, too.” Keith kisses the back of his neck, holding him tightly, and they sit in silence for a moment while Shiro gathers himself. “Now appreciate how Pluto looks tonight. It’s in Pisces right now, you know.”

A smile spreads over Shiro’s face. “You hate that astrology crap,” he says.

“Yeah, well. You like it.”

***

When Shiro’s finally had his fill of staring through the telescope, he sits back, glancing at Keith and following his gaze to the sky overhead. Living in the desert, for Shiro, is difficult because it’s so unlike where he grew up in southern Japan or the windy streets of Chicago after that, but it’s all worth it when he gets to look up at the night sky and see the glowing, hazy band of the Milky Way stretched across the sky. It makes his breath catch every time.

Silently, Shiro pushes himself back until he’s sitting next to Keith and their shoulders can lean against each other. Keith slips one arm under Shiro’s elbow and takes his hand in both of his.

For just a slip of a moment, Shiro tears his eyes away from the sky to press one long kiss to Keith’s hair. “Thank you for this,” he breathes, and Keith grips his hand tighter.

“Takashi,” Keith says, just as the soft chirping of crickets is starting to lull Shiro to sleep. “Tell me—tell me a story. About after you come back.”

Shiro swallows, and he draws Keith in closer to him until they’re basically on top of each other. There’s a knitted blanket in the hoverbike, if he was inclined to stand up and dig it out, but instead he’ll use Keith to keep him warm as the cool chill of the night digs its way into their bones.

“Well, we should buy a house,” Shiro says hoarsely. “With three bedrooms, two bathrooms.”

“Not just two bedrooms?” Keith says. He’s cradling Shiro’s hand so his thumbs can massage at the base of his palm.

“We’re going to need a guest bedroom that’s not the office, because otherwise Matt will go through all of our things when he visits.” Keith huffs a laugh into his shoulder.

“Okay,” he says. “Fair enough.”

A smile creeps over Shiro’s expression. “By the time we get the house,” Shiro says, “you’ll officially be graduated from the Garrison, so you can move out of the dorms and I’ll move out of those ridiculous boxes they call the officers’ quarters. I’m going to teach, and you—you probably won’t teach, I think.” Keith snorts and shoves him gently.

“I bet they would put you in one of the garages, actually,” Shiro says thoughtfully. “As a test pilot, maybe. Something with a flexible schedule so we can take lunch together.”

“We’re not going to see each other enough as it is?” Keith teases.

Shiro ducks down to capture Keith’s mouth in a hot, quick kiss. “Baby, I’ll wake up next to you every morning and it’s still not gonna be enough for me. Some days, we’ll go to the cafeteria because it’s easy, but other days I’m going to steal you away so we can be alone in the desert just like this.”

“Well, some days I’m gonna come into your office and lock the door behind me, and we’ll be too busy to bother actually eating lunch,” Keith says. He shifts suddenly, moving to sit in Shiro’s lap and lean their foreheads together. Immediately, Shiro brings the hand Keith had been playing with to Keith’s waist, tucking his fingers into the warm space between Keith’s body and his leather jacket.

“I’m trying to be romantic,” Shiro says, bumping Keith’s nose with his own.

“What’s not romantic about fucking in your office while on lunch?” Keith asks, startling Shiro into a laugh. “Don’t lie to me and say we can’t have kinky sex anymore when we have a house together.”

“I would never.”

The kiss is lingering and saccharine sweet, tugging at Shiro’s heartstrings and rendering him incapable of knowing anything outside the circle of Keith’s arms,

“What’s after that?” Keith says.

Gently, Shiro presses forward with another kiss. “Well, the next time the Garrison needs to go to Pluto, it’s going to be a bigger mission. I’ll need a copilot. But before we can do that, I—” Shiro cuts himself off as his heart starts to pound in his chest. He wasn’t thinking; he can’t say that.

Keith smooths his hands down Shiro’s chest, sighing a little into the tiny space between their mouths. “You what?”

He hesitates. Silently, Shiro sends a quick prayer to the universe, and then, slowly, he says. “Before we go out there together, I, um. I’m going to make an honest man out of you.”

Keith’s breath stutters, so quietly Shiro would never hear it if not for their proximity, and Keith grabs both of Shiro’s shoulders to shove him back and put some distance between them so he can see Shiro’s entire face. The feeling that Shiro has fucked up begins to crawl through his belly, and he desperately stares into the glittering blackness of Keith’s eyes as he tries to figure out what to say to make this right when he’s literally hiding an engagement ring in Matt Holt’s bottom desk drawer as they speak.

Before he can get a word out, though, Keith gives out an aggrieved moan and he pushes Shiro the rest of the way back to the ground before covering his mouth with his.

Shiro gasps into the kiss as Keith’s hands bury themselves in his hair, tugging and tilting his head so Keith can dive into his mouth like he’s never been allowed to touch Shiro like this before. It’s overwhelming in the best way, and Shiro reciprocates, hauling Keith closer by the hips so they’re pressed together all the way down. He loses himself in the bruising kiss.

With a gasp, Keith tears away, hovering over Shiro so close and yet so far away. “God, you—Shiro—fuck, you can’t just say things like that,” Keith pants, and he leans back down before Shiro can say anything in response.

The sudden urgency, the heat, the way Keith is trying but can’t seem to find a way to get them even closer together—it all coalesces together in Shiro’s mind, the realization building until the knowledge is practically running through his veins. Keith wants to marry him—Keith wants _Shiro_ to want to marry him.

The dreams that Shiro has, they’re something they’ve been talking about almost as long as they’ve known each other. Everytime he tells Keith about something different, like Shiro’s desire to move back to Japan after he retires from being a pilot, far away in the future, or the fact that he wants to foster cats once he’s moved out of the Garrison compound. He still remembers the day he realized he couldn’t imagine the future anymore without Keith by his side, two years into the greatest friendship of his life. He remembers, much later, when Keith asked him what had him so distracted these days and he admitted that he wanted to try them, just once, to see if his heart was right.

That was the first time Keith kissed him.

This kiss feels just like that one, but it has a different grounding—the first one was so joyful and new, the desperation hidden in their shyness of moving from years of solid friendship to something more. Today, though, it just feels like Shiro has been kissing Keith all his life, like there’s never been a moment or a reason he wouldn’t have one hand on Keith’s waist or his jaw and the other one sweeping his thumb over the knob of spine at the base of his neck. There’s joy, and desperation, and even maybe still a little bit of shyness, but Keith knows him better now, knows just when to pull away to nibble on Shiro’s bottom lip, or when to surge forward again and press any advantage Shiro has ceded to him. It’s deeply, achingly familiar, to the point where Shiro can’t help but think, _This is where home is_.

Nothing else gets said that night. They kiss, and they kiss, and Shiro gets so invested in entwining them together that he legitimately does not know where he ends and Keith begins, can’t even conjure up an image of what they must look like tangled up because all of it is just _them_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I got so overwhelmed by the excitement of posting last week I forgot to drop a couple of notes:
> 
> -title is from Mree's "[Harvest Moon](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=up6PQ19DdyI)" who has a voice I could just die listening to. for reference, her [cover](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYv6-5VmNEM) of Empire of the Sun's "Walking on a Dream" is soft, beautiful, and did, in fact change my life.  
> -this fic is edited by my blessed, amazing friend @[eternalheatstroke](http://eternal-heatstroke.tumblr.com), without whom this fic would not exist.  
> -technically, this is also part of a three-fic series, but baby steps first!  
> -as much as I love canon, I'm also taking a fair number of liberties in this fic. all of them are conscious decisions and, honestly, may not even be that noticeable.
> 
> see you next week!


	3. phoenix // april 27, 2078

Shiro knocks rapidly on the door to Matt’s room before lights out with a wild look in his eye, and he bursts inside when it opens to admit him. “Matt,” he says very seriously, if a little unhinged. Matt looks vaguely like a trapped animal. “Matt, I need your help.”

“Okay, maybe next time let’s not start with you scaring the shit out of me,” Matt says slowly, “but sure. What’s up, buddy?”

“I need you to return the wedding ring.”

Matt’s mouth drops open. “What the hell?” He looks like Shiro just asked him to murder someone. “What the  _ hell _ , Shiro, what are you thinking?”

“There’s not enough time,” Shiro says, throwing his hands in the air. “It was a ridiculous idea. Keith will never say yes. Any of those, you pick.”

“Alright, that is  _ categorically untrue _ . All of it.” Before Shiro can start to protest, Matt says, “You just need to come up with a gameplan.”

“It doesn’t matter if I have a gameplan, this is still fucking crazy!”

“Yes!” Matt says, exasperated. “It is absolutely fucking crazy, dude, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it! You’ve already bought the ring. You know this is what you want to do, you’re just scared and coming up with excuses.”

Shiro groans and collapses onto Matt’s bed with his face hidden in his hands. This is too much. Keith is waiting for him down the hall, finishing up his Tactical Systems homework wearing nothing but one of Shiro’s tank tops and those tiny red boxer briefs Shiro manfully tries to pretend he isn’t obsessed with. He’s been eyeing up Shiro since dinner. 

Actually, Shiro has been eyeing him up, too, especially since Keith declared he didn’t feel like going back to his room tonight and had immediately stripped down to what he’s calling pajamas without breaking eye contact with Shiro.

“What’s going on?” Matt says. “Don’t make me get emotional, I swear to god.”

The problem is Keith tucked into his desk, flipping his pen around his fingers, huffing out a pleased little sigh every time he gets a question right. It’s the way he fits into Shiro’s life so perfectly. His raw, sharp edges are somehow smoothed down and soothed in the comfort of what Shiro’s grown to think of as  _ their _ room, where the two of them together makes more sense than the rare nights Shiro finds himself tossing and turning in an empty bed. The problem is Shiro staring dreamily at Keith’s fourth finger, right where his pen rests because he somehow never learned how to hold pens properly. 

The  _ problem _ , he hates to admit, is that Shiro can’t physically or emotionally stomach the thought of Keith saying thanks, but no; it’s not you, it’s me; I love you, but not like that. He’s had anxiety dreams about it for the last three nights. In his imagination, Keith has outright laughed at him, coldly told Shiro that they should break up instead, flipped him off and ignored the question—Shiro can’t handle that. Not this close to launch, and, truthfully, maybe not ever.

“So what I’m hearing,” Matt says, “is that the brave asshole who’s about to launch himself into space with a couple of other assholes, is too scared of his boyfriend saying ‘not until you’re back from space’ to propose to him.”

Shiro thinks. “That’s about it,” he admits.

“Well,” Matt says diplomatically, “have you ever considered telling yourself to shut up?”

“Ugh,” Shiro says with feeling. “I don’t know what’s going to happen. We’ve talked about—someday, you know? But this is--I mean, this is not someday.”

“Sure. But the  _ worst  _ case scenario,” Matt says, and Shiro looks at him with pleading eyes. “No, I’m serious, hear me out. I genuinely believe that your worst case scenario here is Keith tells you to ask again once the Kerberos mission is over. Which, to be clear, isn’t a yes _ or _ a no, it’s a try again later when our lives aren’t about to change in terrifying and unpredictable ways.”

Shiro takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. “You’re right.”

To his credit, Matt magnanimously says nothing. Instead, he says, “There’s a lunar eclipse in a few days.”

“Uh,” Shiro says, caught off guard by the change in topic, but he vaguely remembers hearing about an eclipse. “You want to get a group together? I know a spot we could go to, it’s not—”

“No, dumbass,” Matt says, staring at him disbelievingly. “What I’m saying is, are you gonna take him out into the desert and pop the question while the moon’s blacked out like an adult?”

Shiro’s brain grinds to a halt. They’re approaching two months since he bought the ring and it’s been gathering dust hidden in Matt’s desk drawer all this time. “Oh,” he says quietly. It really is perfect, he realizes, the ideal time to do this if he’s actually going to go through with it. 

“Yeah, oh,” Matt says. “Do you think you’re ready to do it?”

Shiro isn’t sure about the answer to that, and he’s not sure that he’ll ever be completely ready.

But at any rate, there are only forty-four days left until launch. Even without a marriage proposal, Shiro wants to spend as much time with Keith as he possibly can, and this would be an ideal night for spending time together. 

“I’ll do it,” Shiro says, struck with determination. “I’ll ask him during the eclipse.”

“That’s my son,” Matt says, pumping his fist in the air. “You just let me know, anything I can do to help, you know I will. Except be there and ask him the actual question, I won’t do that for either of you.”

“No one wants you to do that,” Shiro says, but Matt looks unconvinced.

“Go back to your future fiance,” Matt says, shooing him off the bed. “I love you and whatever, but you’ve officially infected my life with your emotions and now I need to air my room out.”

“Asshole,” Shiro says fondly. He slaps Matt on the shoulder as he leaves, but he pauses before he can open the door.

“Drop by Wednesday morning and I’ll give you the ring,” Matt tells him. “Get out of here.”

“Hey.” He waits for Matt’s eyes to slide over to him. “Thanks.”

***

Shiro meets Keith on a Wednesday. 

Actually, to be totally honest, they don’t really meet so much as Keith finds him doing something he really shouldn’t be doing, and Shiro doesn’t even get caught by ‘Keith’ in the sense that he never learns the cadet’s name until they meet again later.

Regardless. It’s the beginning of Shiro’s fourth and final year as a student at the Garrison. He has high hopes of being hired as a part-time flight instructor and TA next year—one of the youngest ever, at twenty years old, so long as he gets his application materials in and maintains his excellent flight records. Today is important because Iverson asked him and two other students in his year to give flight demonstrations to all the first year cadets in simulations they’ve designed themselves, and he knows the head of the pilot program will be watching. Matt is in the next building, showing off his own projects—Shiro still doesn’t know exactly what his work is about, but but he published an article over the summer that contains so many big words in the title that Shiro knows it’s amazing.

The perks of being an excellent student (he purposely doesn’t think the phrase ‘among the best and brightest the Garrison has to offer’ because it’s  _ terrible _ and he’s so incredibly tired of hearing it) involve some slight leeway by the administration. Disappearing during orientation activities is definitely included. Breaking into the locked control room for the simulations being run in two hours is definitely not.

He has to be quick. He logs onto the system using the admin credentials his advisor gave him for sim practice—another perk—and pulls up the simulation control files, digging around until he finds the one he’s looking for.

Amazingly, this is some of the sloppiest coding Shiro’s seen in a while. Excellent.

And now all he has to do is type this, and that, and—

“What are you doing?” a voice asks, and Shiro jumps, spinning around. He tries to keep himself firmly planted in front of the screen, but the cadet walks right up to him and cranes his neck around Shiro’s shoulder to get a good look at the file. “You’re not Marco Ricci.”

Shiro slaps a hand over the name badge everyone involved in orientation activities is required to wear. He distinctly notes that the cadet is not wearing his. “No, I’m, uh, a friend. Of his. Just helping out with his demonstration.”

The kid blinks at him. His eyes are—nope, Shiro isn’t going there right now. “Is that why you had to break in here?”

Time for a diversion. “Are you following me?” Shiro asks accusingly.

All he gets is a shrug, and the cadet’s eyes flick back over to the computer screen. Diversion failed. “You know, if you wanted to fuck up the flight sequence, you don’t have to add all that,” he says.

“I’m not—” Shiro says, but the look of flat disbelief he gets is so unimpressed he cuts himself off.

“Here,” the cadet says, and he shoulders Shiro out of the way and deletes the lines of code Shiro had typed in. Shiro watches as this random cadet scrolls to the top of the program, and works his way back down, scanning the next line quickly and deleting a word or adding a number somewhere. Finally, he nods once to himself and saves the program. “Now it’s untraceable,” he says. “You won’t be able to tell it was tampered with.”

Shiro gapes at him. “How do you know how to do that?” The cadet may not have a ‘Hi! My name is’ sticker, but the rank insignia on his uniform clearly designates him as one of the first years. Shiro didn’t learn how to write flight simulations until the summer after his second year.

“I’ve done this before,” the cadet says, which—okay, clearly. “Why are you sabotaging your classmate?”

“Does it matter?” Shiro asks.

“Yes.”

Shiro stares at him, askance. He can’t help but notice that this cadet is—well, he’s Shiro’s type, Matt would say, right before kicking Shiro in the shin to go talk to him, were this a more normal situation. His hair is freshly shaven into a crew cut, and his face is long, with expressive eyebrows and deep, dark eyes. He’s only a few inches shorter than Shiro, but he’s just about the skinniest thing Shiro has ever laid eyes on—actually, it makes him want to take this boy to the weight room and then out for burgers, because he looks like he could really stand to put on a couple of pounds.

And he’s apparently intelligent—smart enough to know how to mechanically crash simulators, at any rate, which is certainly not part of or expected by the first year curriculum.

“Well?” the cadet prompts him.

Distressed, Shiro tries to wrangle his mouth into saying words that aren’t  _ wow, pretty _ . “He’s, um, he’s kind of a dick,” Shiro says, mouth dry. 

The cadet raises an eyebrow at him, and Shiro almost sighs like a wholly charmed middle schooler. “Is that what people do here when they don’t like someone?”

“He assaulted one of my friends,” Shiro admits. “The formal complaint didn’t do anything. He’s up for a job offer after graduation, but if he can’t even fly a sim he designed himself . . .” Shiro trails off and shrugs. 

“That’s really enough to stop him from getting hired?” the cadet asks skeptically.

Shiro scratches the back of his head awkwardly. “No.” He doesn’t say that he’s not working alone and this is only part one of a six phase plan, but it almost feels like the cadet is reading his mind and pulling that information out anyway. Maybe it’s his eyes making him think that—Shiro wants to drown in them. Shiro also wants to hold this kid’s face in one hand and trace his cheekbone with the pad of his thumb, lay a kiss on the edge of his jaw. 

He’s breathtaking.

They’ve been staring in silence for way too long, and they’re so close, practically pressed right up against each other from the way the cadet had shoved Shiro to the side to get at the keyboard. Shiro’s no stranger to the occasional hook up, but he’s never contemplated pushing a boy down onto the floor of one of the simulation control rooms, so desperate to taste his mouth and trace his hand down the whole length of his spine.

He sways closer, so close Shiro can hear the tiny hitch in the cadet’s breathing, but the sound of footsteps coming down the hall shocks him back. They freeze, listening as the muffled sound passes right in front of the door to the simulation room and thankfully continues onward. 

With one final look at the cadet, Shiro nods at him, and they slip out the door, turning in opposite directions as they part.

Shiro doesn’t see him during orientation. 

***

Three weeks into the semester, Shiro gets an email saying a first year cadet named K. Kogane has demolished Shiro’s record in the fight simulator. It’s not too much of an over-exaggeration to say that’s when Shiro knows he’s fallen in love.

***

“Do you remember the first time we met?” Keith asks absently the next night. He’s sitting at Shiro’s desk again with his chin propped in his hand, twirling a pen around in his fingers as he attempts to stay focused on his textbook. Clearly, it’s not working very well.

Shiro sticks another chocolate chip in his mouth. “You practically scared me to death when you came in that room,” he admits.

Keith shrugs. “You were hot. And clearly doing something you weren’t supposed to.”

“What, you followed me because you thought I was some sort of bad boy?” Shiro snorts and shakes his head, deleting another email asking cadets to please stop stealing utensils from the mess hall. He should probably return his collection before he leaves for Kerberos.

Keith has been silent for too long.

Sliding his gaze up from his PADD, Shiro notices that Keith has hunched his shoulders over his textbook and the half of his face that’s visible has a distinct ‘oh shit’ look.

“Oh my god,” Shiro says. “You thought I was a bad boy. You followed me into a dark, locked room because you thought I was a  _ bad boy _ .” Keith stays silent and frozen, and then Shiro gets it. “Wait, were you trying to hook up with me?”

“No!” Keith protests, but his shoulders only climb higher in shame.

“Baby,” Shiro says gleefully. He throws his PADD to the side so he can get up and wrap his arms around Keith from behind, nuzzling into his hair. He whispers into Keith’s ear, “You know I totally wanted to hook up with you too, right?”

“What,” Keith says flatly. “Don’t make fun of me.”

Laughing, Shiro spins the desk chair around so he can get Keith to stop pretending he’s reading. Keith looks up at him petulantly, crossing his arms and leaning back to get a good look at Shiro. 

“You were my type then, you’re still my type now,” Shiro says, shrugging. Keith raises an eyebrow at him.

Struck by inspiration, Shiro carefully sinks to his knees in front of Keith. Almost unconsciously, Keith’s knees part so Shiro can settle in between them, his hands rubbing up and down Keith’s thighs. Slowly, Shiro pushes forward, stretching upward so he can get to Keith’s mouth and kiss him gently, lips barely moving until Keith gives into it and starts to reciprocate.

He kisses him until Keith sighs into his mouth, and Shiro pulls back to whisper, “Let me show you?”

Keith nods, eyes still closed, mouth parted, and this time Shiro kisses him harder, fingers of one hand digging into the meat of Keith’s thigh while the other one starts to push his shirt up. Keith tastes like the chocolate chips they’ve been passing back and forth, and Shiro can’t get enough of the taste of Keith and chocolate all wrapped up together, and he licks deep into Keith’s mouth. 

“Hold on,” Keith says breathlessly, and he pulls his T-shirt over his head by the back of its collar.

Fingers slide into Shiro’s hair as they come together again, and Shiro leans into the kiss with a pleased moan. His hand creeps back up Keith’s thigh, rubbing at Keith’s inner thigh over his sweatpants as Keith gasps into his mouth.

Shiro falls away from his lips, sliding over to mouth at the edge of Keith’s jaw, and then down his neck. He keeps his teeth to himself as he plants a trail of kisses down the center of Keith’s chest. If he was feeling more patient he would spend time making sure he was leaving a line of bruises instead.

He does bite gently at the sparse dusting of hair sitting just above the line of Keith’s pants, teasing, until Keith is growling his name and tugging at his hair.

Keith’s hands immediately go to his waistband when Shiro pulls back, but Shiro grabs his hands and pulls them away. “Not yet,” he says, smoothing one hand up the line of Keith’s dick, mapping out the shape of him through black fabric—apparently, Keith wandered over to his room without any underwear. He lays his head on Keith’s thigh so he can look up at him and watch Keith bite his lip as Shiro massages, just light enough to still be teasing.

“Fuck,” Keith curses. “Come on, Shiro, I—”

Shiro kisses his hip. He loves this, kneeling before a half-undressed Keith and seeing him grow desperate and dark-eyed the longer Shiro makes him wait. The rush of power from the way Keith breaks down in front of him is everything as Shiro leans in and kisses right where the head of his cock is hidden underneath, too feather light to be what Keith strains for.

“Tell me what you want,” Shiro says.

Keith huffs a sharp breath. “You know what I want,” he says, wiggling his hips impatiently.

Shrugging one shoulder, Shiro says, “You know I like hearing you say it.” He trails his fingers teasingly along the inside of Keith's thigh, and it jerks away.

“Stop it, that tickles,” Keith complains. His fingers curl tighter in Shiro's hair. “Ugh,  _ please _ , Takashi. I want it.” He tries hooking one leg around Shiro’s back to pull him in closer.

“Want what?” He grins teasingly up at Keith, happy to watch the frustration crawl across his face as he looks down at Shiro almost disbelievingly.

“I want you to suck my dick, asshole,” Keith says, scowling.

Shiro laughs as he finally plucks apart the knotted drawstring holding Keith’s pants in place. Keith obligingly lifts his hips off the chair so he can drag them down, cock springing free from its confines. Shiro wraps a steady hand around him, and Keith groans, settling back more firmly into the desk chair as Shiro leans in to lap gently at the head, delighting in the little sigh that falls from between Keith’s lips.

He has to tear his gaze away from Keith’s face and the hungry look on it as he stares down at Shiro between his legs. Instead, Shiro focuses on the task in front of him, one hand grabbing at Keith’s hip to keep him still while Shiro slowly sinks his mouth down on Keith’s cock.

The best part of this, Shiro thinks every time he gets the chance, is it gives him the chance to fully appreciate the noises Keith makes, from his little sighs to the tiny, punched out moans he gives when he really likes something. His fingers curl into the meat of Shiro’s shoulder but the hand in his hair is gentle as Shiro gently guides him higher, bobbing his head in long, leisurely strokes that keep Keith from getting too worked up too fast.

“Fuck,” Keith bites out. “You’re so good at this, god. Why are you always so good at this?”

Shiro hums deep in his throat in response, and Keith gasps at the vibration, grip on Shiro’s hair tightening for just a split second, and Shiro feels his own cock throb in his pants at the sensation.

He pulls off Keith’s cock, panting, and says, “Pull my hair,” before bending back down.

Keith curses too loudly, but his hand tangles itself in Shiro’s bangs, lifting them off his forehead and gripping his head in place. Shiro tries to push back down, pull back, but Keith holds him there, halfway down his cock, and instead Shiro tries to put pressure on the back of Keith’s cock with his tongue.

“You can’t wait, can you?” Keith asks, abruptly pulling Shiro off of him. Shiro gasps as Keith makes him look up to see Keith biting his bottom lip, black pupils blown wide with arousal. “Can you?” he prompts.

Shiro tries to shake his head. “No,” he says.

“Slow,” Keith commands, and Shiro listens, lets Keith guide him back down and set the pace. He shifts slightly in the chair, sinking down and legs spreading a touch more, and Shiro settles into the new available space. Keith isn’t quite rough with him, but he’s firm about where he wants to put Shiro’s mouth, holding him up so he’s just barely mouthing at the head and then tugging him back down with a satisfied groan. Just hearing him makes Shiro throb all over. 

“You’re always such an asshole when we start,” Keith murmurs. One of his thumbs strokes at Shiro’s jaw, just underneath where his cock is pushing pash Shiro’s cheek. “But then you’re so good for me, aren’t you? You just want to—ah—to do exactly what I tell you.”

Shiro’s cheeks burn as he sucks at Keith’s cock, but he can tell just from the way he’s talking that Keith is getting close, so he does his best to suck harder until Keith’s breathing is ragged. The hand in Shiro’s hair hurts now, but it’s the best kind of pain, and he moans his encouragement as Keith starts babbling about how he’s about to come. Shiro  _ whines _ when he hears, “So good, so good for me, Takashi,  _ yes _ ,” and he surges forward eagerly, mentally begging Keith to please use him harder.

Keith holds him in place as he comes, not choking Shiro but refusing to give up the warmth of his mouth until his fingers have relaxed their death grip. Shiro swallows carefully and pulls back, still stroking Keith gently through the aftershocks until he stops Shiro’s hand from moving.

“Give me a minute and then it’s my turn,” Keith says through the little gasps of his breath. 

Shiro just grins up at him and swipes his tongue over his bottom lip teasingly. “You sure you’re going to make it?” he asks. “Can’t even keep your eyes open, you came so hard.”

Keith opens one eye accusingly. “I meant what I said, you know,” he says. “You’re such a shit.”

“Hmm,” Shiro says, nuzzling Keith’s thigh as he pushes the heel of his hand against his own dick, so hard in his pants. “I heard you saying how good I was for you.”

“Yeah? You like it when I tell you that?” Shiro nods helplessly into Keith’s leg and starts fumbling at the clasp of his pants. “Maybe you should be good more often, and I’ll say it more.”

Shiro hisses at the first touch of fingers to his dick. He’s so hard already; Keith is absolutely intoxicating above him like this, and all he can think is that if Keith would let him, Shiro would put his mouth back on Keith’s cock to coax him back to hardness so he can suck him off again while he gets himself off at the same time. 

Keith has other plans, apparently, because it’s then that he stands up to tug his sweatpants back into place, and then he’s hauling Shiro up off his knees and tackling him down to the bed. “Fuck, I need to get my mouth on you,” he says, yanking Shiro’s pants with single-minded determination. Shiro lets his head flop back against the mattress as he grins up at the ceiling like an idiot, practically panting in his excitement.

It’s just as Keith is licking one long, hot stripe up the underside of Shiro’s cock that a sharp rap comes on the door. They freeze.

“Yo, Shirogane!” Matt calls out. “Dad just called, said we need to get down to his office right away. Some paperwork we gotta sign or something.”

Shiro sighs dramatically. “Yeah, give me a second,” he calls out before sitting up and looking at Keith, who actually has the nerve to pout at him. “I’m not happy about this.”

“You could always stay,” Keith says, pressing a kiss to the crease of his thigh.”

“Duty calls,” Shiro sighs, sitting up as he accepts the truth of his fate. Keith shifts back to give him room to pull his pants back up and start putting himself back together. “Sorry, babe.”

“Your loss, technically,” Keith says, but he still looks disgruntled.

“Not a loss at all, actually,” Shiro says, pressing a kiss to Keith’s cheek as he stands up. “I like making you come.”

Keith makes a face, and Shiro winks at him before he turns to pull his uniform jacket off its hook next to the closet. “I’ll be back soon, promise,” he says, refastening the buttons and jamming his feet into his combat boots. “Do I look alright?”

Wordlessly, Keith gets up and approaches him. He combs his fingers through Shiro’s hair, resettling his bangs into something that hopefully looks less like he was just busy letting his boyfriend pull his hair. “You’re good,” he says, smiling at Shiro.

“Ugh,” Shiro says, struck helpless and silent by the look on Keith’s face. He kisses Keith once, twice—four times, actually, before he can bring himself to move away, and Keith looks like he wants to sway back in for a fifth. 

“Hurry back,” Keith says. He’s got a look in his eyes that’s slightly diabolical. “I’ll be ready.”

“Ready for what?” Shiro asks. Keith just makes a show of groping Shiro over the front of his pants and mouthing wetly at the hinge of his jaw because  _ he’s  _ the one who’s a shit, and then he turns away and flops back onto the bed, scrambling out of his pants while Shiro is still watching. Oh. Right, that.

Shiro’s face is red as he steps out of his room, and he graciously accepts Matt’s fist bump as he does everything in his power  _ not _ to think about what Keith will be doing while he’s gone. Thankfully, Matt doesn’t seem to notice that anything is amiss, but Shiro still wipes his mouth self-consciously as Matt instantly launches into a story about one of the cadets he supervises in the biochem labs.

When they arrive in from of Sam Holt’s office door, Matt admits, “Okay, so I may have slightly misled you about our purposes here today, but have faith in your best buddy, alright?”

“Matt,” Shiro sighs, and he closes his eyes in exasperation as Matt pulls out a key that he’s definitely not supposed to have and opens the office door. 

“Don’t be dramatic. Dad gave me a key.”

“That exact one?”

“No, he gave me the original, and I copied it, obviously,” Matt says, flipping on the lights. 

“Well, I can say it’s been a while since we broke into somewhere like this,” Shiro says, flopping into one of the chairs in front of the desk as Matt goes around and boots up the desktop computer. “But your dad’s office isn’t exactly our most high stakes mission.”

“Mm, no,” Matt says absently. He mutters to himself, something incomprehensible that Shiro doesn’t understand, and then a-ha’s triumphantly. “Found it! Wanna hear something really weird?”

Internally, Shiro groans, because he has a strong suspicion that this is about to be another one of Matt’s weird, terrible prank memes that Shiro is literally never going to be able to unsee. He tries to give Matt the benefit of the doubt as he pulls his chair around the desk to sit and peer at the screen over Matt’s shoulder.

Surprisingly, there are no scarring images pulled up, just an audio file named phoenix_audio_0065420_9. Frowning, Shiro glances at the file name again.

“Matt, this is stuff even your dad doesn’t have clearance to get,” he says.

“I know, but it’s easier to hack into with his credentials since they get us deeper in without me having to break anything. Trust me, Shiro, you want to hear this—it’s weird. Like, it's  _ really  _ weird.”

“Please tell me your dad’s not going to get in trouble for this,” Shiro says.

“As if anyone in the Garrison could track me,” Matt scoffs. “Listen up.”

The recording crackles for a second as Matt hits play, and then a ghostly, echoing noise starts to drone from the speakers, too loud for the tiny office they’re in. Shiro flinches at the volume, but he says, “We’ve heard this before, Matt, these are just planetary radio emissions.”

“No, wait,” Matt says, and Shiro closes his eyes. There’s a deep, rattling bass undercutting the thin, high-pitched overtones, and if he listens closely, the noise settles in his bones. Soon Shiro will be among the planets that made these sounds—Jupiter, Saturn, and finally Pluto, whose odd, thrumming noise was captured by Mission Phoenix and just lost contact with Earth less than a decade ago, surrendered to an unremarkable death far beyond the Kuiper Belt. It was the first ship the Garrison launched into the outer edges of the solar system with the goal of collecting data for what would become the Kerberos mission.

This recording is strange, though. Usually, Shiro finds them soothing and awe-inspiring in what they can capture that can’t quite be fully translated from radio waves into sound, but there’s a strange feeling of foreboding creeping through his veins, growing more certain the longer this one goes on. He can’t pinpoint what it is about this one that makes him so uncomfortable. The pitch isn’t unbearable, or the discordant symphony, but something is churching his gut, something about this is making the hair raise on his arms and his heart pound a little faster no matter what he tells himself. He chances a glance at Matt, but Matt is just staring at the screen with his jaw set in a peculiar way.

“Matt—” he tries, but Matt shakes his head and points at the screen.

Suddenly there's a clanging noise the likes of which Shiro's never heard before in his life. It's unsettling, borderline terrifying, and if his heart wasn't racing before, it would be now.

The recording cuts out. Matt puts a hand on Shiro’s arm before he can say anything and opens the next tab, playing audio recording phoenix_audio_0065421_9. It’s similar—this time, a hoarse sound undulates in the foreground, pulsating like breath, but the same eerie hum of high and low notes continues in the background.

There’s a growl, followed by low-pitched chittering noises, almost like—like—

“What the fuck,” Shiro breathes. That sounds  _ nothing _ like a magnetic field, or a gravitational field, or any single deep space recording Shiro has ever heard before.

A sharp crackle, and the audio cuts out.

“What the  _ fuck _ ,” Shiro repeats, louder this time. “When was this recorded?”

“Almost eight years ago exactly,” Matt says solemnly. “Two days before the Phoenix team announced that they had lost final contact with the probe, likely due to normal degradation of its systems.”

Shiro stares. “That cannot be what I think it is.”

“I admit I don’t know what it is,” Matt says, “but there’s one more thing you’ve gotta hear. This one was sent right after the recording was received.”

He presses play on what looks like a secure communications channel—the sort of thing that has a security clearance so high Shiro isn’t even sure who’s allowed to listen to it, much less send it. It’s only eight seconds, and when Matt hits play, it’s silent for so long that Shiro almost starts to wonder if something is wrong with the file.

But then the words: “We found them.”

***

Shiro doesn’t tell Keith. He doesn’t know what to think, what there even is to tell—Matt hasn’t discovered anything else yet, he said, but he’s still digging. Apparently he was sorting through files related to Kerberos out of boredom and found references to the soundscape recordings and lucked out on finding the third, but it doesn’t add up to much, if it adds up to anything. The only explanation Shiro can even imagine just doesn’t make any sense, because, aliens? No. 

So he puts it in the back of his head. He’s still busy preparing and studying for the mission, and now he has a new deadline to meet with this eclipse on Wednesday night, so there isn’t much time to ponder weird recordings that he still half-believes Matt might have just created to fuck with him.

Convincing Keith to see the eclipse with him is easy because it doesn’t actually take any work on Shiro’s part. Keith actually suggests it himself, and Shiro agrees, glad he doesn’t have to spend ten minutes trying to stay cool while asking Keith out on a date that’s going to become a marriage proposal. Keith would see through him in a second and demand to know what was going on.

Shiro sneaks away into town Tuesday while Keith is in sim training to pick up groceries for their picnic, and he barely makes it back to the gym in time for their weekly sparring session so Keith can beat him into the ground and make fun of his precise, military-style fighting moves.

“This isn’t the time for ‘patience yields focus.’ You’re never gonna take someone in a real fight if you won’t get dirty,” Keith is fond of telling him while he’s sitting on Shiro’s chest, or pinning him down with his arms wrenched up from behind, or threatening to squeeze his neck to the breaking point between his thighs.

Okay, so that last one is kind of hot, actually, but that’s not the point.

Keith doesn’t call him out for being out of breath when he arrives, just raises an eyebrow at him as Shiro slides into his warm-up routine. Shiro gets his ass handed to him more soundly than usual that night.

***

Alright. Game time.

He pulls out all the stops, which is to say he fishes his old leather jacket out of the depths of his closet and presents Keith with a gift before they leave. It’s nothing big, just a pair of compression gloves to replace the ones he’s had since starting at the Garrison that are seriously starting to fray at the edges. Shiro suspects they no longer do what they’re supposed to, but Keith so far has refused to replace them.

“You’re being nice today,” Keith says, tone mildly suspicious as he accepts the gloves. Shiro takes pride in the fact that Keith keeps sneaking looks at his shoulders in the jacket.

“I’m not allowed to do something nice for my boyfriend once in a while?” Shiro asks, wrapping his arms around Keith and nuzzling the top of his head.

Keith hugs him back. “Tell me you’re not blindsiding me with a bullshit six month anniversary surprise or something,” he says, face buried in Shiro’s shoulder. Manfully, Shiro pretends he doesn’t notice that Keith is sniffing the combination of Shiro’s soap and leather.

“I’m definitely not doing that,” Shiro says. “But if I was, I just want you to know my feelings would be hurt right now.”

“Noted,” Keith says with a snort, and he pushes Shiro away. “Let’s go, then.”

Keith pulls on the gloves as they walk out to the garage, flexing his hands and examining the fit critically. It’s cute to watch, so cute that Shiro clips his shoulder on the doorframe into the hangar like a complete dumbass. He blushes under Keith’s stare, but strides to his bike without allowing himself to acknowledge what just happened.

When he climbs onto the bike and Keith is settled behind him, Shiro takes them out into the desert. The sun has just dipped under the horizon, staining the sky red and purple in its aftermath. Wrapped solidly around Shiro, Keith presses his helmet between Shiro's shoulder blades.

The doubt creeps back into Shiro's mind as he takes them to the lookout spot. The deeply rational side of his mind admits that this is in fact  _ not  _ rational at all, and it would be kinder to Keith to break up with him than it would be to ask him for some deeper commitment than they've already promised each other. And it would be kinder, for both of them, because Shiro already fears the chance that this will only alienate Keith from him, might break their relationship now beyond what is possible to salvage.

Keith is a fierce, wild thing. Loving him is exhilarating in the best way, but Shiro is terrified Keith might see this as an attempt to cage him.

Shiro knows Keith can tell something is going on once they park. He's too smart for his own good, and blessed with an instinct that can read Shiro like he's an open, waiting book. Luck, Keith calls it, but he's better with people than he likes to let on.

“Wine?” Shiro asks, waving the bottle at Keith. 

“This doesn't even have a cork in it,” Keith says with a laugh as he twists open the cap.

“What's wrong with that?” 

Keith just stares at him like Shiro is a monster, and then takes a swig straight out of the bottle, proving who the real monster is here.

“I brought cups,” Shiro says, holding one out to Keith, but he gets rejected.

“Drinking out of the bottle is tradition.” Keith takes another drink, and smiles beautifically. “How many times have you gotten me drunk like this?”

“Too many,” Shiro grumbles. There goes the classy toast he had planned, and now he’s not sure why he spent so much time coming up with a plan when he knows that Keith tends to throw all of Shiro’s careful planning out of the window whenever he gets the chance. “Give me that.”

They sprawl out on the blanket Shiro put down, carefully passing the bottle back and forth. The warmth of the day is quickly fading as the moon rises higher, and Shiro pulls Keith in against his chest.

“Do you ever feel like the desert is calling to you?” Keith asks, slipping his fingers under the edge of Shiro’s shirt to warm themselves against his skin.

“I feel you calling to me,” Shiro says honestly, and that gets him a muffled laugh. Smiling, he presses his lips to the top of Keith’s head, and prays to anything that might be listening that he’ll get to keep this boy.

“It’s happening,” Keith murmurs. He points his finger to the sky, tracing a concave line down where the edge of the moon is just starting to disappear. That’s all it takes for Shiro’s heart to start pounding in his chest, for his hands to get sweaty. His moment is coming, and he still doesn’t know if he’s ready for it.

The moon grows darker. Shiro is tipsy from the wine. Keith leans up to kiss him, and it tastes like their cache of Doritos and chocolate covered pretzels.

“You’re quiet tonight,” Keith says softly.

Shiro just stares up at the moon, trying to formulate his response. 

Keith elbows him gently. “Takashi?”

With a heavy sigh, Shiro pushes them both up, dislodging Keith from his chest so they’re sitting next to each other. He pulls his jacket closer from where he had tossed it on the desert floor, and feels for the ring box in the pocket.

Silently, he meets Keith’s eyes, still unsure what to say, so he presses their foreheads together and brushes his nose over the high point of Keith’s cheek. “I love you,” he whispers. “So much.”

“You too,” Keith says, so much raw honesty in his voice that Shiro hurts.

“Keith,” he says, and pauses for a moment. “Keith, if I ask you a question, will you promise to tell me the truth? Even if you think it’s not what I want to hear?”

Keith frowns at him, eyebrows pinched together while he rolls the question around in his head. Shiro’s hands are clenching and unclenching uncontrollably, and he stuffs them behind his back so Keith can’t see it. “Yeah,” Keith says quietly, leaning in so he’s pressed all the way up against Shiro, one long line of heat contrasted against the cool desert night air.

Shiro tries to look at him, but Keith’s face is too close, too distracting, too—beautiful, so he tilts his face up to the moon and stars instead. It’s terrifying to think that Shiro has finally found something more difficult to comprehend than the vastness of the wide open night sky.

“I’m going to be gone for two years,” Shiro says, even though this is something they’re both well aware of. Keith doesn’t call him out on it. “And I—I don’t want to be selfish, because you deserve so much more than I can give you, especially right now.”

“Shiro . . . .” Keith whispers. He sounds like his heart is breaking.

Shiro curses under his breath and bites his lip, shaking his head. “You heard Matt and Jeavonna agreed to split up when he found out about the Kerberos mission?” he asks. “It was mutual. Neither of them were happy about it, but there’s long-distance relationships, and then there’s dating someone who’s on Pluto, you know?”

“Takashi, stop it,” Keith says frantically, drawing away from Shiro. He rises to his knees, grabbing Shiro’s face between his hands. “We already—I don’t want—”

“Fuck, I’m ruining this,” Shiro says, cutting Keith off because he can’t listen to his voice getting thick with tears. He covers Keith’s hands with his own, pulling them down and away as he laces his fingers through the spaces in between Keith’s. “What I mean to say is—I really don’t want to be selfish. And that’s what Matt is doing.” He’s falling headfirst into Keith’s eyes, would swear in a heartbeat that he can see every individual star from above reflected there, the slivered crescent of the moon as it disappears behind the shadow of the Earth.

“This is your decision. Whatever you want, I understand, and it doesn’t have to change anything,” Shiro says thickly. “But I have to—you have to know that I don’t know how to not be selfish with you. And what I am trying very poorly to do here—” he stops, pulling one hand away to bury his hand in the pocket of his jacket “—is ask you to marry me.”

He presses the black velvet box into Keith’s slack fingers, holds his breath, and takes in the way Keith’s mouth drops open in disbelief.

“You asshole,” Keith breathes, “I thought you were breaking up with me.”

Shiro offers him a weak smile. “I thought it might be . . . better, if I did. I don't want to hold you back. You deserve someone who--who's going to be there for you. Whenever you need, when you graduate, when—”

“Shut up,” Keith snaps. He swallows thickly. “Just—shut up. Fuck. Of course I want to marry you.”

His fingers are squeezing the ring box so tightly; Keith hasn’t even seen the ring yet. Shiro gently pries his fingers off it one by one and flips it open to take the ring out.

Shiro doesn’t breathe as he slides the ring onto Keith’s finger, and when it’s finally settled, he looks up to meet Keith’s eyes. They look wild, unrestrained, and Shiro shivers under the full force of his gaze. 

“Fuck,” Keith says, and he slams his mouth against Shiro’s, shoving his shoulders flat to the ground and climbing over him like he’s Keith’s personal jungle gym. Shiro clutches tightly at him, moaning in approval and meeting Keith’s desperation stroke by stroke, thrilling at every touch.

With both hands firmly gripping Shiro’s face to keep him down, Keith pulls back and growls at him, “Don’t you  _ dare _ do that to me ever again.”

“What, propose? I would—”

But Keith ignores him, silences him by crushing their lips back together, and Shiro thinks wildly that he’s never felt so alive before.

Falling in love with Keith was never in question for Shiro. It was as easy and inevitable as the Earth turning on its axis, as the way their bodies and mouths fit together now like interlocking puzzle pieces. Keith is every bit as breathtaking each morning Shiro gets to wake up next to him now as he was as an angry, lonely eighteen year old with little more to his name than a terrifyingly sharp knife and a chip on his shoulder. 

Shiro has been—blessed, really, to know Keith since he came to the Garrison, to watch him grow into his own in a way that Shiro wonders if he ever did himself. Keith is still angry, still lashes out sometimes when subtlety would be more appropriate, but he no longer walks around like the world is big enough for everyone else but too small to fit his own body in with them. Shiro genuinely believes that Keith has always been beautiful, but there’s something about the quietly assured way Keith walks now and how he settles into spaces like he believes he can belong there, and that alone makes Shiro think that maybe the two of them can be good for each other.

He doesn’t know a lot about Keith’s life before—before Shiro, before the Garrison—and he’s never quite brought himself to be able to ask, reading instead the way Keith grows immediately disinterested over the subject of going home for the holidays. 

He doesn’t ask, but one night, drunk in equal parts on whiskey and the purpled sheen of Keith’s eyes peering into his own, he tells Keith that he’ll never ask but he’ll always listen. He thinks now, that that particular moment, Keith’s eyes wide in drunken wonderment and his legs sprawled across Shiro’s lap, might have been just the one to confirm to Shiro that he felt something irreversible.

“I’ve been in love with you since the day we met,” Shiro gasps into the scant air between them when Keith finally pulls back to let them breathe.

“Then how come it took you so long to do anything about it?”

And Shiro—he laughs. He rolls them over, giggling, pressing kisses to Keith’s cheeks, forehead, neck, his hands when he tries to push Shiro off as laughing bubbles up from his chest. 

“You’re going to marry me,” Shiro says gleefully. “You said yes.”

In a rare show of utter sentimentality, Keith shakes his head, trying to bite back a smile that won’t listen and whispers, “In every lifetime, in every reality. I will always find you.”

The eclipse above them is beautiful, Shiro is sure, but when he thinks back on it later, the brightness in Keith’s eyes and the way he cradled Shiro so gently and fiercely all at once drowns the rest of it out. The full knowledge settles over him that the future belongs to them, that they’ve done something so fundamentally important that Shiro’s life will be changed forever.

It’s a beautiful thought.

***

Keith nearly gets them busted the next morning. Uncharacteristically, he’s grinning like an idiot, practically glued to Shiro as they stumble out of Shiro’s room to get to the cafeteria before they stop serving breakfast. They get several meaningful looks and raised eyebrows from the few officers they pass, and Shiro tries his best not to look any of them in the eye. But he’s not going to push Keith away. It’s incredibly clear what they were up to last night, but Shiro likes to think that they’re sort of an open secret in this hallway, because the other young officers who are Shiro’s neighbors definitely see Keith in and out of his room at all hours of night and day, and Shiro knows they’re not always the most subtle about being seen together.

“What is  _ wrong _ with him?” Matt says when they sit down, a look of pure disgust on his face. It only makes Keith look more smug.

And, fine, looking at this situation objectively, maybe some of Keith’s, uh, look right now is technically Shiro’s fault. Keith’s collarbone is riddled with bruises, and there’s one so high up on his neck that the collar of his uniform won’t possibly cover it. And when he asked Shiro to borrow a shirt this morning, Shiro had very purposefully dug up one of his softest, most worn out T-shirts that just kind of . . . hangs from Keith’s body. And very prominently displays and reveals his exciting collection of bruises.

Shiro touches a hand to his neck self-consciously. What does  _ he  _ look like?

“Yeah, buddy, you look just as bad as he does. Gross.” Matt scrunches up his nose at them. “I guess I don’t have to ask if it went well last night.”

The way Keith turns to look up at Shiro and his smile grows more blinding is answer enough. Shiro smiles back helplessly and twines their fingers together under the table. “He said yes,” Shiro says, “so that went pretty well.”

“Dear god,” Matt whines. “Please know that I am incredibly happy for both of you, but don’t do that in front of me. You’re killing the breakfast vibe.”

“We’re not even doing anything,” Keith says, finally turning away from Shiro to tuck into his scrambled eggs.

“You are, and the amount of love at this table is literally murdering me right now,” Matt says, stabbing a fork at them accusingly. “You know I’m allergic to feelings, and yet you torture me anyway.”

Keith raises his eyebrows smugly as he takes a bite of food without breaking eye contact.

Stuffing the last of his food in his mouth, Matt stands to leave. “I can’t look at this, have a good breakfast, and come hang with me when you can chill. Eurgh.”

Shiro laughs at he waves at Matt, and Keith settles more firmly against him. 

“Baby, you’re gonna draw attention to us,” Shiro says, but he can’t bring himself to pull away or push Keith back.

Keith just shrugs. “I don’t care.”

Shiro has to laugh at that. “What, you’re staking your claim now?”

Keith grabs a fistful of Shiro’s shirt and pulls him in until their noses are almost brushing, challenge flickering in his eyes. “Maybe,” he says.

The cafeteria is relatively empty right now, in that weird space between breakfast and lunch where the late sleepers are eating with the people who have work through lunchtime, but there are still people there. Shiro is uncomfortably aware of this fact, but he meets Keith’s challenge with his own. 

“I love you,” Keith whispers.

Shiro bumps their foreheads together gently. “I love you, too,” he says, and means it with every molecule of his body.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the next chapter is already 12k and won't end, so hopefully I can be back in a week!
> 
> you can find me on Tumblr @[disloyalpunk](http://disloyalpunk.tumblr.com)!


	4. infinity // may 11, 2078

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> finally, the beast of a chapter is complete. couple of linked songs in the text! they're a lil spoilery which is why they're not up here. i am...obsessed with eric whitacre.

Shiro stares down at the pile of paperwork Iverson handed him in confusion. “Rejected?” he asks, eyes caught on the bring red ink of the stamp splashed across the top page. Iverson looks at him like he’s done something weird.

“Obviously, Ensign,” Iverson says. He looks deeply annoyed that they're having this conversation at all. “Mission access is restricted to immediate family members. I am aware you and Cadet Kogane are close, but there are no exceptions.”

“But, sir—” Shiro says helplessly.

“I appreciate your attempts,” Iverson says, and he almost sounds honest. “But it’s extremely sensitive information we’ll be allowing access to, and there are strict regulations in place because of the nature of this mission. It must remain top secret.”

“But _why_?” Shiro says, unable to contain his frustration. “Sir, I only want to—”

“Watch your tone, Ensign,” Iverson says sharply. “You were informed of the secrecy required when you accepted this position. This mission has the potential to completely revolutionize our understanding of foreign planetary life formations, and I will not risk letting a _cadet_ become an information leak.”

“Please, sir, Keith would never jeopardize the mission like that,” Shiro protests. “He’s my closest friend and he doesn’t have anyone else— _please_ just consider it.”

“I gave you my answer,” Iverson answers, jaw clenched. “No one else gets access. It could put us all in danger.”

Danger? “What danger could possibly come of—”

“I highly suggest you remember to watch your tone while speaking to your superior officer,” Iverson says loudly, slapping his palm down on his desk. Shiro snaps his mouth shut and eyes him. “If you resubmit the form correctly, I will review it again.”

Shiro stifles a heavy sigh as he nods, resigned, and Iverson launches into another topic of conversation. He had known it was a longshot when he wrote Keith’s name down on the form right under his aunt’s. It’s a highly exclusive list to be on—as a practical consideration, more than biweekly communication is only allowed to spouses and immediate family. The ship is outfitted with highly specialized machines that will be constantly sending back massive amounts of data about things Shiro doesn’t even understand. The technology is still fragile, though, and despite Matt’s best efforts, he still hasn’t found a way to ensure that sending messages home won’t interrupt the data streams. He tried to explain it to Shiro once, but, scientifically, it’s all way above Shiro’s head, not to mention his pay grade.

But what Shiro really wants to get Keith access to are the mission logs and real-time updates on the crew. The logs are daily, written reports, and most of them probably won’t even be interesting. The crew status will only be as current as how long it takes for the radio waves to travel back to Earth, but it feels like the best way to be able to reassure Keith that he’s safe and that everything is going well. Pluto is only about five light hours away; it’s not an insurmountable distance in this day and age.

His meeting ends with Iverson handing him a clean printout of the rejected form, and Shiro glumly fills it out, sans Keith, signing his name at the bottom reluctantly.

Keith meets him outside the cafeteria with a soft smile as his hand rises to touch the engagement ring hidden under his clothes, hanging from a chain around his neck. Despite everything, Shiro smiles at that, and he mouths, _Hi, baby_ , at Keith as they turn to go inside.

“How was the meeting?” Keith asks once they’re seated with full trays, his question reliable like clockwork. It’s blessed macaroni and cheese day, and Shiro’s plate is heaped as high as he can pile it with delicious, neon orange sustenance, topped with a more than liberal sprinkle of bacon. Keith’s plate is much more modest, and he has a side of steamed vegetables, because he doesn't understand and appreciate the full glory of macaroni and cheese day.

Shiro shrugs one shoulder, the news weighing on him more than expected. “My mission contacts form got denied because I put you down, so I had to resubmit it.”

“Oh.” Keith ducks his head, but Shiro doesn’t miss the disappointed look that breaks across his face.

“He won’t budge,” Shiro says glumly. “Said the information is too sensitive.”

“Yeah.” Keith is just pushing noodles around his plate without meeting Shiro’s eyes, and Shiro wishes with all his aching heart that he could reach across the table right now and take Keith’s hand. “I—we knew it wasn’t likely. It’s fine.”

“Sweetheart,” Shiro says softly, and that finally gets Keith to glance up. “We can find a way, I’m sure my aunt would—”

“Shiro, no,” Keith says. “No, I—I don’t want your family to get in trouble or anything, and we’ll still be able to talk. Just—not as often.”

“I’m sorry,” Shiro says. He gets a brief, brittle smile in response, but it’s a smile all the same.

Unfortunately, that pretty much kills the mood for the rest of dinner. The macaroni is predictably excellent, but it can’t do anything to help dissipate the cloud hovering over Keith. Shiro cajoles him to come back to his room by offering to look over his statistics paper before he submits it tomorrow.

As soon as the door slides shut, Shiro pulls Keith into him and buries his face in his hair. Keith’s hands clutch at the back of Shiro’s coat, and he heaves one long shuttering sigh like he does when he’s trying not to cry. It makes Shiro’s heart break to hear.

“I think I made Iverson mad,” he confesses, nuzzling at the spot just above Keith’s ear. “Too much backtalk.”

Keith snorts wetly. “You’re not much for backtalk,” he says, voice muffled by Shiro’s shoulder.

“Normally. I think I’ve learned a thing or two from you,” Shiro says.

“Yeah,” Keith says. He sniffs once, twice, and disengages his arms to step back. Shiro thumbs at the corner of his eye to wipe away the tear glistening there, and when Keith meets his eyes, his smile is a little more genuine this time.

“Homework time?” Shiro says.

“I’ll send you my essay?” he asks, and Shiro nods in confirmation.

They take up their respective posts—Shiro sprawled across the bed and Keith hunched over the desk. Truthfully, if Keith didn’t use the desk, it would just sit there forever unused because Shiro hates sitting at it to do any kind of work. He does much better comfortable and stuffed under a blanket. It’s no trouble at all to read through Keith’s paper, comment a few suggestions, and send it back to him.

Shiro doesn’t at all miss working as a teaching assistant. He enjoys the teaching aspect, and even the classroom management and grading isn’t completely awful, but working two almost full time jobs between that and the Kerberos mission preparation was never in his definition of fun. He still doesn’t exactly have a lot of downtime, but he feels noticeably less stressed out during it.

Gazing absently at Keith, Shiro eyes the curve of his cheek and the twitch of his eyelashes as his focus moves back and forth between his textbook and his computer screen. He should do something—other than staring.

Rolling over onto his stomach, Shiro pulls his journal up on his PADD and taps in his passcode. The last entry is from a few days ago, so he sketches out his life since then, paying special attention to how annoyed he is that Iverson won’t give him just a _little_ leeway on the Keith situation. Iverson was a pain when Shiro was one of his students, but he’s somehow even worse now that Shiro is piloting a mission he’s in charge of. Shiro hasn’t done anything right in his eyes since he agreed to pilot.

Shiro adds _:(((((((((_ to the end of his entry and calls it good. He puts his face down, cheek pressed to the screen, and closes his eyes. He naps, sort of, until Keith startles him by flopping down on the bed.

“All done?” Shiro asks, rolling to face Keith.

“Mhmm.” Keith reaches out, strokes his hand down Shiro's forearm to trace the skin of his knuckles. “Thanks for looking over my essay.”

“Of course. I remember being in that class; Captain Leathea is a hardass.”

“Yeah.” Keith pauses, but he has that look on his face like he’s thinking hard about something. “She . . . said something to me after our last class,” he says hesitantly. “Asked me to stay back after it ended.”

Shiro frowns. He flips his palm over in Keith’s so he can hold his hand. “Was there anything wrong?”

“No. She, um, she offered to help me develop my thesis project for next year,” Keith says. “Said she knows fighter pilots usually do sim designs or fly for the Navy, but she’s interested in holding a position in her lab for me next year.”

“Hey, that’s great,” Shiro says, squeezing Keith’s hand. “Doing what?”

“They’re working on an engine design for the next major space flight after the Kerberos mission. They need someone with flight experience to run the sims and work on the statistics reports.” Keith swallows. “She said I’m not supposed to tell anyone this, but command is hoping to build the next flight crew from people who worked on the ship.”

“Holy shit,” Shiro breathes, grabbing Keith’s face between both of his hands as excitement bubbles up through him, erasing any trace of sleepiness from his mind. “Holy shit, baby, that’s amazing! Oh my god, I’m so proud of you.” He kisses Keith enthusiastically, artlessly, because he’s grinning and Keith is smiling, and suddenly Shiro is _giddy_ . “Keith, I—you could be on the next deep space mission, you could be the next _pilot_ for that!”

“Nothing’s for sure, yet, I mean, there’s not even a destination or anything, it’s—”

“ _Honey_ ,” Shiro interrupts, so fond as his thumbs stroke over Keith’s cheekbones. “Captain Leathea wouldn’t ask you to be a part of this if you weren’t being considered. Command knows you, they’ve seen your grades and your sim scores. They know that you’re already a better pilot than I was back then.”

Keith takes a breath. “I just—don’t want to get too excited, or expect anything,” he says, but the tiny smile on his lips means he’s not denying Shiro’s statement. “It’s still too soon. But . . . .” He trails off, and he doesn’t need to finish his thought. It’s written all over his face.

“I love you so much,” Shiro whispers. “You’re the most brilliant man I’ve ever met.”

Ducking his head in embarrassment, Keith pushes into Shiro’s space, pressing them together by laying half on top of Shiro and shoving his nose into Shiro’s collarbone. Shiro wraps his arms around him tightly and buries his face into Keith’s hair, unable to keep the smile off his face. His gut instinct is telling him that this means more than either of them can even comprehend—Keith is set to go even farther than Shiro, beyond Pluto, to something else. There’s the Oort Cloud, still largely hypothesized and undiscovered, there are potential planets still almost impossible to see, or even Alpha Centauri—there are places and future discoveries out there that Shiro can’t even conceptualize. And Keith, the man laying in his arms right now, he could take humanity there, to the literal unknown of scientific discovery.

Shiro is about to embark on the longest, most important two years of his life, and his only regret is that he won’t be able to see Keith climb on top of the entire world while he’s out there.

“Come back here,” Shiro murmurs, and when Keith pulls back to look up at him, Shiro captures his lips in a kiss.

This is what he’s going to miss the most, he thinks, the lazy kissing, getting to hold Keith, talking to him about the minutiae of their days and imagining the future. He’s so proud of Keith, almost indescribably so, but the throbbing disappointment that he’s going to be almost completely absent for all of this can’t be ignored.

But now isn’t the time to be upset about that, Shiro reminds himself, and he renews his attention to Keith. He cradles Keith’s jaw in one hand like he’s holding something precious. The kiss is sweet, slow—there’s no heat here, not today, and it’s the most comfortable Shiro has ever felt.

Keith’s fingers comb gently through his bangs, and when he pulls back to look at Shiro with his deep, glittering eyes, there’s a new fire burning there that takes Shiro’s breath away.

“Takashi,” Keith whispers urgently. “Takashi, listen.”

“What is it, baby?” Shiro asks, frowning as he tries to pull Keith back down to him, but he meets resistance.

“Let’s get married,” Keith says. His voice is so quiet and hopeful, but their faces are so close it’s like belonging to another world that only contains the two of them.

“We already are,” Shiro says. He tugs lightly at the chain hanging from Keith’s neck.

“No, I mean let’s do it. Now.”

“Now?”

Keith deflates a bit. “No, not _now_. But—soon. Tomorrow. This weekend. That way they can’t keep us apart.”

“Iverson would be pissed,” Shiro says. A bright, bubbling feeling begins to bloom in his chest.

“Fuck Iverson. Stop thinking about him when I’m asking you to marry me,” Keith says.

“Well, I asked you first,” Shiro argues automatically, and Keith thumps a hand on Shiro’s chest impatiently, eyes searching his own.

Marry Keith. Now. Or, not now, but soon. Can he do that? Can _they_ do it? Shiro tries to imagine what Matt would say, because for some reason Matt Holt is half of his impulse control, and can’t come up with anything more than a raucous laugh and two thumbs up.

“I don’t care what anyone thinks,” Keith says in a rush. “Let them—let them talk, or whatever they want to do. I don’t care. I don’t want either of us to miss the next two years of our lives because of some _stupid_ fucking rules.”

A smile creeps across Shiro’s face. He takes in the closeness between them, the determined set of Keith’s face, the ring hanging outside of his T-shirt, the physical manifestation of the fact that he wants to stay bound to Shiro, and Shiro can’t even imagine what would make him say no. _You’re it for me_ , he thinks. _There will never be anyone else._

“Yeah,” Shiro says, soft, and then, “Yeah, let’s do it. Let’s get married.”

***

Shiro pursues the shadow of Cadet Kogane with the single-minded intensity of a hungry predator on the hunt. He does everything in his power to find out where he disappears to, but Kogane may as well be a ghost—if it wasn’t for the first year simulator scoreboards with the name K. Kogane and a grainy picture of a familiar looking boy stacked on top of T. Shirogane, Shiro would think he’s chasing thin air. But he remembers this kid, recalls his big wide eyes and the way his uniform hung just that little bit off his shoulders, making him look fragile and touchable, and it’s _not like that, Matt_.

“I just want to be his friend,” Shiro maintains as they go through the lunch line. “Have you seen his sim scores? They’re incredible—he’s better than I was when I got here, can you imagine what he flies like? I think there’s a lot we could learn from each other.”

“Yeah, in _bed_ ,” Matt scoffs, throwing an elbow into Shiro’s side. “I know what you look like when you’ve got a crush, dude, and it’s written all over your face. You want him bad.”

“Yeah, I want to be _friends,_ ” Shiro says with emphasis, and he accepts a scoop of overcooked green beans from the kitchen worker in front of him with a smile. “Don’t you think he probably needs it? I haven’t seen him with any of the other first years. He might not have really found any yet.”

“Do us all a favor when you find him,” Matt says, “and bang him.”

Sighing, Shiro walks away. That is not what this is about.

And it still isn’t when Shiro actually _finds_ Cadet Kogane in the gym late one afternoon. He’s whaling on a punching bag, arms and the sides of his ribs bared by the cut open sides of his tank top, and instead of sweatpants and neon tennis shoes like most students wear to the gym, he’s wearing athletic leggings with a pair of black compression socks. He’s skinny, definitely, but the shifting cut of muscle in his bicep as he takes another swing makes it clear that he’s not weak in the slightest.

Shiro tries to tell himself he’s suddenly dizzy because of dehydration or something, but it’s—hard to deny what’s sitting right in front of him.

God, his ankles are tiny.

Shiro tries to make himself look busy nearby, but he’s not even managing to fool himself. He can’t keep his eyes off the seemingly endless line of Kogane’s legs or the raw intensity in the furrow of his brow. The gym is incredibly warm today, and Shiro unconsciously licks his lips as he settles down into a gentle butterfly stretch. Kogane is an obviously brilliant cadet who never hangs out with the other first years as far as Shiro can tell, and he probably needs a friend. Shiro—who should really stop staring at Kogane’s thighs now—can be that friend.

He manages to tear his eyes away for a full twenty-three seconds—which he counts because it’s part of his warm-up routine, thanks—but then a pair of thin, socked feet plant themselves in front of them. Shiro’s eyes trail upwards to well built calves, strong thighs, slim hips, and—oh.

Kogane looks furious. He has his arms crossed and his eyes flash as he spits out, “Can I help you?”

 _Yes, please_ , Shiro thinks. Thankfully, the adult side of his brain decides to kick in and he says, “You’re Cadet Kogane, right? We’ve met before, but I didn’t catch your name.”

Kogane gives him a hard stare. “What do you want?”

“I’ve been looking for you,” Shiro admits, shrugging up at him. “I’ve seen your scores—you’re brilliant.”

Apparently, that’s the wrong thing to say. “Great. You’ve found me. Now leave me alone.”

“No, wait!” Shiro says. He scrambles up from the floor to follow Kogane. “It’s just that you beat my scores. I thought we could—”

“Could what?” Kogane all but snarls, whirling around on his heel so fast Shiro almost can’t stop in time to avoid running into him. “I’m not here for any of the games you people like to play, and if you’re just trying to—to play nice so you can make fun of me with your friends, or whatever, then get out of my face.”

That gives Shiro pause. “Has someone been making fun of you?”

“What? No.” It’s a blatant lie, but Shiro decides to let that go for now.

“Then why would I?”

Some of Kogane’s anger starts to fade to confusion, and he shrinks back into himself. “I . . . .” Kogane trails off.

Shiro studies the lost look on his face. It sparks something protective in him, and he makes a split second decision on gut instinct. “Come out with me,” he says, feeling a little reckless. “Let me buy you a burger.”

“Why should I go anywhere with you?” Kogane retorts.

Crossing his fingers behind his back, Shiro says, “C’mon, have you ever been on a hoverbike before?”

Kogane shakes his head mutely.

“Come with me,” Shiro says.

“Why?”

“Well,” Shiro says consideringly, “why not?”

Kogane seems to take that as a challenge because he acquiesces immediately with a scowl. But when they get to the garage after the most awkwardly silent walk of Shiro’s life, Kogane’s face lights up when he sees Shiro’s red bike, like he can’t believe it’s real.

“You’re allowed to just take this out?” he asks.

“As long as we’re back by curfew,” Shiro says, tossing him the second helmet. Usually, it’s Matt riding behind him. “And we’ve got plenty of time.”

At first, Kogane is hesitant to hold on tightly to Shiro, so he stops the bike just outside of the Garrison’s front gates and says, “You’re gonna have to hold on tighter than that if you want to go fast.” There’s silence behind him, and then the hands gripping at his sides slowly creep forward until Kogane’s arms are locked around Shiro’s waist and he’s pressed up against Shiro’s back. It makes Shiro shiver even in the warm heat of the sun, and he firmly reminds himself that Keith needs a friend before anything else.

“Ready?” Shiro asks.

“Ready,” Kogane confirms, and then they’re flying out into the desert.

***

Just as Shiro once suspected, it feels phenomenal to get Keith to eat a burger, even better than the feel of him clinging to Shiro’s back on the ride into town. The burger joint is Shiro’s favorite restaurant: everything is skillet-fried, deep-fried, or topped with ice cream, and the burgers don’t come in anything smaller than half-pound beef patties. The fries are covered in some sort of chili lime seasoning that may as well have been made by the gods, and Shiro can’t imagine a better meal to be had anywhere else in the country.

Kogane’s eyes go round as dinner plates when the waitress, Halle, sets his food in front of him with a wink, a barbeque bacon cheeseburger with extra pickles and a side of onion rings. The burger alone is bigger than his whole head.

“And I’ll be right back with yours, Shiro,” Halle says with a pat on his shoulder. “Where’s Matt today?”

“He’s back at the base. My friend’s new in town though,” he adds, nodding at Kogane

“Alright then, boy, welcome to Tuba City!” Halle gives Kogane a cheery grin that he doesn’t look like he quite knows what to do with, and then she darts back to the kitchen window when Shiro’s order gets called. She deposits Shiro’s plate—mushroom and swiss burger, extra fries cooked extra crispy with extra seasoning—and says, “Call me if you need anything, boys.”

Shiro pours a liberal amount of ketchup on the side of his plate in preparation for the meal he’s going to spend the rest of the week working off in the gym, and crunches down on a fry with a happy moan. It’s so worth it.

“How does she know you?” Kogane asks, so quietly Shiro almost misses it. He hasn’t touched his plate yet.

“Matt and I come here a lot, especially over the summer,” Shiro answers with a shrug. He pulls his milkshake towards himself for one final sip before he embarks on the glorious adventure of his dinner.

Kogane is hesitant about starting, but once he picks the burger up—and Shiro looks away guiltily from how small it makes his hands look—he digs in like nobody’s business, and damn near licks his plate clean by the end of it. Clearly, the skinniness is born of something more like a fast metabolism than a lack of meals.

When he’s done, Shiro flops back on the bench seat with a sigh and licks the salt off his fingers. Neither he nor Kogane have said anything since their food arrived, and even before that conversation was silted and limited to which of Keith’s first-year classes he’s enjoying. Or tolerating. Or taking, maybe? He wasn’t quite sure what was going through Keith’s head while he vaguely alluded to completing an assignment for Iverson’s Intro to Flight class.

Shiro needs to come up with a slightly better plan if he’s going to mold this into anything resembling a friendship.

But already, Kogane’s face is softer when he meets Shiro’s eyes. The wariness is still there, but the hostility has been combated by the glories of greasy food that didn’t come out of the cafeteria and their exhilarating ride through the cliffs and sand dunes.

Kogane is the one who breaks the silence. “I don’t know what you want from me,” he says, and finally it’s not an accusation or a scoff.

“I really don’t want anything,” Shiro says, but he doesn’t know how to get the boy in front of him to trust in his honesty. “I just hoped that maybe we could get to know each other.”

“Okay,” Kogane says after a long pause. “What then?”

Shiro shrugs. “Do you go by your first name?”

“Um. Yeah.”

“What is it?”

Kogane’s mouth drops open a little bit, but he doesn’t speak as he studies Shiro. Eventually, he says, “Keith.”

With a grin, Shiro parrots back, “Hi, Keith, I’m Shiro.”

“I . . . I know who you are,” Keith says, and the little furrow between his eyebrows is back.

“I didn’t want the introductions to feel one-sided.”

Keith sighs. “I don’t understand you,” he says, worn, like he’s thought and said it a million times. Shiro knows the feeling.

“I have an idea,” he offers. “Let’s trade off questions—you ask one, then me, then you, right? You can ask me anything you want.”

Again, Keith hesitates, but Shiro can see him mulling over the offer in his mind. He waits patiently for the short, sharp nod of agreement.

Somehow, that’s what finally works. At the time, Shiro just feels a sense of relief that he’s finally made something that could be considered positive progress. Later, though, when he looks back on that moment with an almost encyclopedic knowledge of Keith and how his mind works, he realizes it wasn’t the funny questions he started out with to break the ice, but the offer of reciprocity.

“What happened with Ricci’s sim?”

Innocently, Shiro shrugs, and works hard to keep the smirk off of his face. “Not sure. Last I heard, he had some, ah, technical malfunctions resulting from sloppy work. The brass wasn’t too impressed.” For a brief moment, Keith looks proud of himself. “My turn. Where are you from?”

Keith looks to the side. “Here, sort of. What about you?”

Shiro doesn’t press him further, and he just says, “I grew up in southern Japan, but it’s been over ten years since I’ve lived there. I applied to the Garrison’s accelerated program when I was sixteen, and I’ve been here ever since.” He shrugs and figures that’s really all there is to say on that. “What made you apply to join the Garrison?”

“Needed somewhere to go when I turned eighteen.” He’s not saying the words exactly, but Shiro reads between the lines: not from anywhere with nowhere to go paints a picture of grief that Shiro doesn’t want to intrude on, not today. Keith drums his fingers on the table as he studies Shiro, searching as if to look for something in particular found in the slope of Shiro’s shoulders.

Whether or not he finds what he’s looking for, Shiro never finds out. Keith is prickly and a little sour, but Shiro intimately recognizes his drive and his intensity, cut through with a sharp tongue and a set jaw, and he knows—he _knows_ , far too intimately—what it’s like to feel all alone in the world. Already, he understands so much of who Keith is without him needing to say any of it. Shiro knows down to the bottom of his heart that Keith is a person he needs to have in his life, and he’s determined to make sure that happens.

***

Shiro breaks the news to Matt about the impending wedding when Matt comes to his room to drop off more paperwork, and Matt sighs with the deep irritation of someone who has spent the last four hours on hold with customer service. Shiro isn’t sure the news warrants that kind of reaction, honestly.

“Are you telling me,” Matt says, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Are you seriously telling me that I have to immediately plan and execute a bachelor party _and_ a wedding? Is that what you’re saying to me?”

“Uh. No?”

“Do you think this is a game, Shirogane?”

Shiro just stares and wonders why his best friend is such an overdramatic asshole.

“Okay. Okay, fine, when’s the wedding date?”

“Don’t laugh,” Shiro warns.

“I’ll be too busy _crying_ over this timeframe, spit it out.”

“Next Wednesday is the solar eclipse,” Shiro says in a rush. “It would be—”

“Forget crying,” Matt says, hands tugging at his own hair. “I’m going to _vomit_. That is—so cheesy. Disgustingly cheesy.”

Shiro shrugs, unable to keep the grin on his face. “It was Keith’s idea. I think it’s perfect.”

“He could ask you to get married on a trash heap and you would still find it romantic,” Matt says scathingly. “Thanks for this. I’m not going to get any sleep because of how soon this is, you know that, right?”

Exasperated, Shiro says, “Matt, I know you want to help, but—”

“No buts.”

“— _but_ ,” Shiro says, glaring at Matt. “But we don’t want a big thing. It’s just going to be a quick ceremony at the county clerk’s. We’ll watch the eclipse afterward, and then maybe go for dinner. We’d like you and your family to be there, but that’s it.”

“No,” Matt says, shaking his head. “Unacceptable. First of all, your bachelor party is going to be on Friday, so you have three days to get your livers ready.”

“We also really don’t need a bachelor party,” Shiro says, but Matt steamrolls right over him.

“Don’t care. Do you realize how much emotional hell you two have put me through in the last three years? I deserve this.” Matt levels him with the flattest look imaginable. “And you’re going to continue appreciating all that I do for you by letting me plan your wedding.”

Why is he like this? “We don’t want a wedding, we just need to go to the judge and sign the paperwork. It’s not a big deal.”

“Also don’t care about that,” Matt says. “Trust me. I know someone who can officiate, and we’ll keep it small. Also, you will have a bachelor party because _I want to have a party_.”

Being friends with Matt Holt is like being friends with a hurricane. Shiro lost this battle before he even stepped foot in Matt’s room to tell him anything, and honestly, it’s not worth it to fight him.

“Alright, but you have to tell Keith,” he says finally. “He doesn’t want this to be a big deal, and if it’s going to be a big deal, I want to make sure he knows that it’s your fault.”

“You should put more faith in me,” Matt says, smirking. “Aren’t I the whole reason you managed to propose to him in the first place?”

Shiro groans.

“Just trust me,” Matt says, clapping Shiro on the shoulder as he moves to leave. “I know you. I know both of you; you’ll be glad you agreed to this.”

It’s really, _really_ not worth it to argue.

***

Truly, it’s terrifying how little time Matt Holt needs to plan a wedding. By Thursday night, he tells Keith and Shiro that he has a venue, an officiant, guests, and dinner afterwards already planned, all for next Wednesday, starting at three in the afternoon. He frowns when Keith informs him that he doesn’t own a suit, and Matt instructs him to wear his dress uniform in its place, and for Shiro to buy a nicer tie than the one he owns.

Shiro had expected Keith to protest when Matt put himself in charge, but he’s been silent about the whole affair. A nagging suspicion in Shiro’s gut says that Keith is somehow involved in all of Matt’s planning, but he keeps his lips frustratingly sealed when Shiro asks.

Matt is smart about it, though. He invites all of their friends out to the bar on Friday night without actually telling them the occasion, just says that they haven’t let loose together in a while. That’s why on Friday night, Shiro finds himself absolutely packed into his friend Jeavonna’s van with ten other people, even though legally the van can only hold eight. Matt immediately claims shotgun, and Keith ends up on Shiro’s lap because, as Jeavonna says, “You’re small and you like each other enough anyway.”

She winks at them.

Keith and Shiro never really broadcasted their relationship to anyone, even their friends. The only reason Matt is so involved is because he’s unquestionably Shiro’s best friend, and frankly, after living together for four years, Matt is just in tune with Shiro’s brain. He bore first hand witness to all of Shiro’s awkward attempts at befriending Keith all the while vehemently denying that he had any romantic intentions at all.

Jeavonna, though, is perceptive—she’s in the communications program, and can read people better than anyone Shiro has ever met. She never came right out and asked, but Shiro is certain that she knows. And, truthfully, Shiro wouldn’t be surprised if because Jeavonna knows, everyone knows.

Shiro wouldn’t describe his relationship with Keith as subtle, necessarily. Quiet, perhaps. Under the radar. Realistically, his friends must know, because while Keith and Shiro are careful to be professional at the Garrison, it’s moments like these where they slip up and forget about the fact that they’re breaking many, many rules.

It’s complicated, to say the least.

“Get out of your head,” Keith says into his ear, turning so his back is pressed against the door to the van and his head is hidden behind Shiro’s.

Shiro grabs Keith’s leg to steady him as the van hits a huge pothole. “I’m here.”

Keith presses a long wet kiss to Shiro’s neck in response.

“Hey, now,” Shiro says mildly, glancing next to him, but no one is paying them any attention. Matt has started an argument about mushrooms that everyone feels very strongly about, so Shiro tugs Keith in just that little bit closer with the arm wrapped around his waist.

“Love you,” Keith says. The way he says it is so thoughtless, like it’s not even a fully fledged thought but just a fact about his mental state, and it makes Shiro’s face warm. Keith’s fingers are playing with his ring, pulled out from underneath his T-shirt, and his face is tucked into Shiro’s neck so his breath puffs out over Shiro’s collarbone. The weight of Keith in his lap grounds him, and when Keith joins in on the mushroom argument with the fury of a man who doesn’t believe in eating things that can’t be classified as either a fruit or a vegetable but probably should be, Shiro settles into this space and stops thinking about the rules.

***

The bar is loud, of course. The parking lot is so full they have to park two blocks away, and almost as soon as they’re inside, Shiro loses Keith in the crowd. They’re with so many of their friends that he isn’t worried—Keith knows these people, is comfortable with them, and Shiro reasons that the spot he’s staked out to nurse his beers at the bar is easy enough to find. He’s chatting with Corinne about her current project in the engineering labs when a heavy weight plops straight into Shiro’s lap. He laughs in surprise as his arms come up to steady Keith on top of him.

“Shiro. Shir _ooooo_.”

Corinne laughs out loud at them, and she claps Shiro on the shoulder. “I’m gonna go find Allie, I need to dance,” she says. “You boys have fun.”

“Bye, Cor,” he says, laughing as he pulls Keith’s hand away from where it’s trying to feel up his chest. Shiro has had about one beer too many to consider disentangling himself from Keith, but he understands propriety.

“What’s up, baby?” he asks, grinning. Keith is petulant.

“Can’t believe you,” Keith says. He’s barely keeping his eyes open, and he throws his arms around Shiro’s neck and buries his face in his shoulder. “Can’t be _lieve_ you!”

“You can’t believe me, huh?” Shiro says, scratching his fingers through Keith’s hair gently. “How many shots did Matt and Jeavonna convince you to take?”

“Shh.” Keith presses one finger to Shiro’s cheek; he guesses it was supposed to land on his mouth. “Don—don’t distract me, ‘kay? Mad at you.” Shiro snorts, pulls Keith’s hand away from his face in order to lace their fingers together.

“Can I ask why you’re mad?”

Keith harrumphs and pushes himself up, reeling backward when he overshoots, and Shiro steadies him again. “Good,” Keith says approvingly. He puts his hand right back on Shiro’s abs, like it physically pains him to stop grabbing Shiro at every opportunity. “Mmm, _good_.”

“Don't objectify me,” Shiro says, laughing, but Keith scoffs at him.

“You should just take this off,” he says, pushing Shiro's shirt up so his hand is sprawled skin to skin on his lower belly. He looks up at Shiro from underneath his eyelashes—any other time, that look would make Shiro's knees go weak and his jaw drop, but one of Keith's eyes is drooping a bit from the alcohol and it ruins the effect.

Okay, maybe it's not sexy, but it’s still hilariously adorable.

“I don't think this is that kind of bar,” he says once Keith's hand has made it all the way up to his sternum. Shiro doesn't mind the hungry look on Keith's face at all, but the bartender's expression behind him has shifted from annoyance to blatant interest. There’s a reason he was hiding in the most remote corner of the bar. “What are you mad at me about?”

The redirection works, and Keith sighs dramatically as Shiro pulls Keith’s hand away again and laces their fingers together, holding onto that hand tightly.

“Very mad,” Keith says. He hasn’t seen Keith this gone in a very long time, but all it makes Shiro think is that he wants to get on that level. He doesn’t remember a single night since accepting the Kerberos post that he got to be irresponsible, and he knows he shouldn’t because he’s supposed to be setting an example and being a role model and acting as a live illustration of everything good the Garrison has to offer to its recruits and the world and blah blah _blah_. He hates just thinking about it.

Shiro’s fiance is beautiful and he reserves the right to be a little irresponsible tonight.

Shiro leans in and brushes his lips over Keith’s, not at all surprised when Keith surges forward to follow him. Keith’s mouth is a little sloppy, but Shiro can’t claim to be completely sober either, and honestly it just feels—good to be a little loose, a little wild. He stops thinking about what the Garrison is expecting from him and starts thinking about how good the shamelessness of Keith’s spread thighs feels over his own. Shiro dives into the kiss hungrily. Keith sucks on his tongue and then breaks away to collapse into a fit of giggles, his nose mashed to Shiro’s cheek.

“What has gotten into you?” Shiro asks, trying to chase Keith’s mouth but unable to catch him. He _wants_.

“Um,” Keith says, drawing the word out and tilting it up at the end like a question. “Tequila. And also something Mircea gave me. That went down better after the tequila.”

“Last time you drank something Mircea gave you, you told me to never let you do that again,” Shiro says. He compromises with himself and makes do with the underside of Keith’s jaw, tasting the sweat on his skin and teasing at leaving dark bruises.

But Keith just shrugs at that and starts craning his head around the bar, disrupting Shiro. “I’ll show you, it’s _good_ ,” he says, and then he’s waving Mircea over and telling him that Shiro needs more of ‘the fun stuff that burned.’

Shiro is fairly certain that there’s a law against bringing your own liquor to a bar like this, but Mircea just pulls two separate flasks out of his pocket and shakes them one by one up against his ear to see how much liquid is in them. “All yours, boys,” he says, winking and handing over the fullest one. “Glad to see you two are finally, uh. You know.” He waves a hand between them with his eyes fixed on Keith’s ring, hanging freely on his chest. “Mazel tov.”

“Everyone is going to know we’re dating by the time tomorrow morning comes,” Shiro says as Mircea walks away, but Keith just shakes his head at him and tips his head back for the flask. His nose scrunches up at the burn.

“ _Not_ dating,” Keith says. He grabs his ring and holds it up for them both to admire. “Engaged.”

“Engaged,” Shiro says, laughing. He sniffs at the mouth of the flask as Keith tries to pass it over—it smells _awful_ , like paint thinner and bad decisions, and Shiro seriously considers for a moment not drinking it. He has a meeting tomorrow afternoon that’s going to be hard enough to get to after a late night and a couple of beers, but.

This is technically his bachelor party. That’s enough of a reason to celebrate.

Keith snickers at him as he coughs from the burn. “What the hell is this?” Shiro wheezes. It tastes like vodka became death.

“‘S good, right?” Keith says, clearly so drunk his taste buds have completely melted off.

“Ugh,” Shiro says, and he takes another swig.

“Yes,” Keith positively coos, and then he steals the flask back happily.

Shiro can feel his entire esophagus right now from the alcoholic burn. He shakes his head as Keith tries to hand it back—he needs a break from that. Keith screws the cap back onto the flask with some difficulty, but then he’s tucking it in the inner pocket of his jacket.

“You’re so hot,” Keith says out of nowhere. Shiro chokes on a laugh.

“Am I,” he says.

“Even when you’re making your liquor face,” Keith says, nodding sagely. “I would know.”

“I . . . don’t know what that means.”

Keith doesn’t stop nodding. Amused, Shiro wonders if he notices and can’t stop or if he can’t even tell and just thinks the world should be moving like that.

“I’ve seen you naked,” Keith says. “Lots. Very hot.”

“You’re hot too,” Shiro says, and he means it. He’s thought Keith was hot for over three years now, and it’s still exciting when Shiro remembers he’s allowed to do things now like rub his hands up and down Keith’s thighs where they’re spread over his lap.

Shiro knows he’s drunk as soon as he sees a similar image in his mind, of the exact same scene in the exact same place, except Keith is wearing far less clothing and is just sort of rubbing himself all over Shiro, who’s wearing significantly more clothing than Keith is. It’s a great fantasy, but it brings a blush to Shiro’s cheeks even as he wishes he could make it happen.

“We’re both hot,” Keith announces with all the confidence tequila brings, and someone passing by with a pitcher of beer almost trips on their laughter.

“I don’t know what we’re supposed to do at a bachelor party,” Shiro confesses.

“Get drunk and have fun,” Keith says. His loose grin does wonders for Shiro’s contentment. “Takashi, you gotta have fun with me.”

“I am having fun with you,” Shiro protests, but Keith is already sliding out of his lap and tugging at Shiro’s hands.

“Wait,” Shiro says, and he picks up the last third of his unfinished beer and throws it back. The carbonation pricking at the back of his nose nostalgically reminds him of the years before Keith came to the Garrison, when it was him, Matt, and the rest of the small circle they call friends.

This whole night is nostalgic, really—this is the same bar they came to (read—snuck into) as cadets, the same shitty beer Shiro has bought countless glasses of, the same mildly unhappy DJ everyone dances to even though he usually drops the beat about three times an hour. Shiro’s relationship with Keith is practically brand new compared to his relationship with this bar.

The bar that they’re apparently leaving.

Shiro lets Keith tug him outside by the hand. Shiro swings his jacket back on as the night air nips at his skin, and once he’s settled, Keith nudges up underneath his arm and steers them toward wherever he wants to go.

Shiro’s head spins pleasantly as they wander down the town’s main road. They’re not the only people out and about even though it must be after midnight by that point, but it’s a beautiful, clear night. They trade the flask back and forth between them until it’s gone, wandering progressively slower as the alcohol hits. Shiro isn’t even paying attention to where they’re going, his eyes tracing the constellations above them and rambling about comets when Keith pulls him insistently into a familiar doorway.

The smell hits him first. “Are you hungry?” Shiro teases, but Keith just shrugs noncommittally as he pulls Shiro into the diner.

They take their usual booth all the way in the back, Keith crowding into the seat next to Shiro. Throwing an arm around Keith’s shoulders, Shiro offers him the menu from the condiment holder, even though they’ve both been here so many times they could probably recite it front to back. Keith doesn’t even ask Shiro what he wants when their waiter comes over, just orders a huge plate of crispy french fries and the appropriate milkshake flavors for optimal fry dipping.

“We’re getting married,” Keith muses.

“Yup,” Shiro says. “Next week.”

Keith gives an aggravated sigh.

“What?”

“Don’t think that just ‘cause you got me drunk I forgot I’m mad,” Keith says, head lolling back on Shiro’s shoulder to eye him suspiciously.

“I did not. Besides, you never told me what you’re mad about,” Shiro says. Part of him worries it’s something to do with the wedding, but he reminds himself instead that the wedding was technically Keith’s idea in the first place.

“I had a _plan_ ,” Keith insists, poking a finger into Shiro’s thigh repeatedly. “You ruined my plan.”

“Tell me about your plan.”

“Was gonna propose to _you_ ,” Keith slurs. “Right when you landed the stupid ship back on Earth. And you ruined it!” Keith shakes his head and snorts. “Useless. Can’t rely on you for anything.”

“Baby!” Shiro says, elated. He does his best to gather Keith up into his arms, hauling him into his lap and pressing messy kisses to his cheeks. “Do it anyway.”

“I can’t, we’re getting married this week!” Keith protests, but he claps his hands to Shiro’s jaw so he can hold him in place and kiss him on the mouth. “’M not gonna propose to you _again_.”

“Well what if I want you to?”

“I’m not—”

Their waiter plunks their milkshakes down onto the table far harder than is strictly necessary, giving the two of them the evil eye. Keith scowls back in challenge. Taking the opportunity to nuzzle at his ear, Shiro ignores the literal teenager and says, “Next time I’ll let you propose to me.”

“Ridiculous,” Keith says, passing Shiro his milkshake. His eyes still haven’t left the back of the high schooler staffing the diner.

Softly, and not even a little bit petulantly, Shiro says, “Look at me.” When Keith does, he smiles. “I love your eyes.”

“Shut up,” Keith says, just a little breathless, and he presses the gentlest kiss to Shiro’s mouth, eyes sparkling. Keith tries to feed him a fry dipped in chocolate milkshake, but he misses Shiro’s open mouth and leaves a streak of ice cream down his cheek. “Takashi. I’m so drunk.”

“Romantic,” Shiro says, wiping his face clean, and—well, maybe he means that.

***

Through the undefinable power of what Shiro calls Matt Holt on a mission, the wedding comes together without a hitch. His entire schedule somehow gets moved around without Shiro having to lift a finger, and he turns up fifteen minutes early at the beautiful park Matt found on the outskirts of Flagstaff. Already, as Shiro approaches the site on his hoverbike followed by Matt and Keith in one of the Holts’ cars, there are far more people there than he had expected, interspersed with folding chairs and tables he recognizes from the Holt family camping equipment. Somehow, despite his extremely specific request regarding the size of the guestlist, he’s been ignored.

He takes his helmet off, though, and forgives Matt immediately.

Tears well up in his eyes when he sees his aunts standing next to Sam and Colleen Holt. It’s way too early to start crying, but when Zareena stands up and throws her arms open for him, he practically collapses, sobbing into her tiny frame. She hums and strokes her hand over the back of his head, and then she’s passing him to Tomoko who hugs him so tightly his ribs creak under the pressure.

“My sister would be so proud of you,” she whispers, pressing a fierce kiss to the side of his head. “And so would our parents.”

She holds him until his shoulders stop shaking, and then hands him the tissue her wife holds out for him. “I’m sorry,” Shiro says, blowing his nose and laughing a little. “I just—didn’t expect you. Did Matt call you?”

“Yeah, about that, what the hell?” another voice says, and a hand thumps Shiro hard between his shoulders. “I can’t believe I had to hear about your wedding from the moms, and that you didn’t even tell them!”

Shiro turns and looks up into his face of his cousin Ryou, and his face splits into a grin. “Is Ruhi here, too?”

Tomoko shakes her head. “She couldn’t get out of teaching her classes,” she explains. “But she showed me how to work that new video streaming thing, so she’ll be watching!” Tomoko looks inordinately proud of herself for that. She plants her hands on her hips and shakes her head, just staring at him and Ryou. “It’s been forever since I’ve seen my boys together.” She pulls the two of them at once back into her arms

“Who’d of thought baby Takashi would be the first kid to get married, huh?” Ryou says as the hug breaks apart. Shiro makes a face at the name. His cousins are really more like adopted older siblings than anything else, and Shiro had always suspected he would be an uncle to one of their kids before ever getting married himself.

“I knew from day one,” Tomoko brags. “As soon as I met Keith, I knew Takashi was going to do something dumb for him one day.”

“You did not,” Shiro says, scandalized.

“I did! I told Zareena, I said—where did she go?” Tomoko turns in a circle and sighs, exasperated. “Well, I did tell her. I said I bet you were going to propose to Keith on the day he graduated from the Garrison. Maybe my time frame was a little off—I thought you would have a long engagement—but I can’t predict everything!”

“Well, no one knew he was gonna be the first person to go to Pluto either, so I think we get some leeway,” Ryou says. “Where’s Keith?”

“He’s with Matt,” Shiro says, turning to look. He can just see Keith’s head over the top of the car, and he must have gotten his haircut yesterday. It’s still longer than his hated crew cut, but the top looks much less messy than it was.

“ _There’s_ Zareena,” Tomoko says, exasperated. “She just disappears all the time.”

Shiro watches with a sappy smile as Keith leans down to hug Zareena tightly, and he wishes that he could hear what his aunt said to put that look of wonderment on his face.

“Just look at you,” Tomoko says, and she drags Shiro back into another hug.

It feels surreal to stand here, wrapped in his aunt’s arms ten minutes before he’s going to get married. He tries to reign himself in, but as tightly as he squeezes his eyes shut, he can’t stop the tears that slip out, and when Tomoko finally pulls back, he sees that she’s crying too. “Are you ready?”

Shiro is, in fact, not ready, but he doesn't quite realize this until he's standing face to face with Keith, Sam Holt officiating between them and a small gathering of friends and family watching them. It's not the marriage itself that Shiro isn't ready for—far from it, honestly. He's watching Keith staring up at him, though, his eyes wide and soft, and all Shiro can concentrate on is him. He misses whatever Sam says to open the ceremony, and mentally thanks his cousin for demanding that this be recorded for her, because Shiro would like to watch it too and know what [happened](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UEAZjQjbQU).

“I understand you two wanted to say something to each other. Shiro?” Sam says, prompting Shiro out of his haze.

“Uh—I, yeah, I wanted . . . .” Oh fuck, Shiro just forgot his wedding vows, the ones he literally wrote himself. “Um.” He meets Keith's eyes and tries to mentally apologize, but Keith is _laughing_ at him, with one hand covering his mouth. It can't hide the playful way his eyes are glittering, though, and Shiro is all too familiar with that look.

There's an aggrieved sigh behind Shiro, and then Matt is pushing a small sheet of paper into his hands. Frowning, Shiro looks at it, and sees that Matt somehow wrote down his vows for him. Shiro has no memory of telling Matt what his vows were going to be.

“Keith,” Shiro says, but it comes out all wrong. Why is he so nervous all of a sudden?

Clearing his throat, Shiro skims through what Matt wrote down and commits the gist of it to memory. Then he hands the piece of paper back behind him and thinks, _fuck it_.

“Keith,” Shiro says, voice quiet and tender. “I've known you since I was twenty, and I know that was only three years ago, but I swear that it's been a lifetime.” Keith nods at him, the corner of his mouth twitching. “I can't imagine living without you beside me—I couldn't even handle it when you did a month-long basic training camp the summer after your first year, and we weren't even dating then.” That gets a chuckle out of the crowd.

“I'm sorry I'm leaving,” Shiro admits, the first time he's said it so explicitly. “I wish I could spend every second of the next two years with you so we could have a normal engagement and wedding like my aunts, and I think maybe Matt, already had planned for us.” Tomoko guffaws to his right, and Matt mutters something underneath his breath. Shiro knows he isn’t wrong about the wedding plans. “But I promise that even my being gone will never stop me from loving you or taking care of you. I will be there for you every second I possibly can, and I will always look up at the stars and think of you, whether I'm on Earth, or Pluto, or anywhere in between.”

Shiro is openly crying now, but he doesn't pause to wipe his eyes. He wants Keith to hear. “I love you. I always will. We're getting married today for a lot of reasons, but none of those change the fact that I would have married you three years ago or three years from now as easily as I am today.” Keith swallows thickly and nods at him encouragingly, hand tight where he’s gripping his own arm, probably to keep himself from crying in turn.

Finished, Shiro nods, mostly to himself, but Keith takes it as a signal to reach out and grab his hand so he can press his lips to Shiro’s knuckles.

“Keith?” Sam prompts gently, turning to him. Shiro doesn’t know what Keith is going to say, but he does know that he’s going to be bawling at the end of it.

Taking a deep breath, Keith squares his shoulders and fixes Shiro with a look that’s almost defiant. “[Takashi](https://youtu.be/fLmOhck6maY?t=1m21s),” he says firmly. His jaw is set like he’s preparing to take a punch, not say his wedding vows. “I’m not marrying you because you’re leaving. I’m marrying you because I’m going to follow you wherever you go. We’ve both been chasing after the stars our whole lives, and nowhere is too far for me to reach you.” Shiro’s grip is so tight it might be breaking Keith’s fingers, but there’s no sign of it on his face, just the steely determination he blusters through all of life using. “Next time,” Keith says, and a tiny smile graces his beautiful face, “next time, we’ll go together. But until then, this is how I stay with you.”

As expected, tears are dripping freely down Shiro’s face, and he can hear at least two separate people sniffing around them. He has no proof of it, but one of them sounds suspiciously like Matt, and if Keith reciting his wedding vows wasn’t the most perfect thing Shiro has ever seen, he would definitely turn around to make fun of him.

Ryou presents the rings between them with a flourish and without being prompted. Sam tells Shiro to say something, and he misses it. Keith covers his mouth to hide his snort when Shiro asks him to repeat.

The final vows are short and simple. Shiro registers that he's repeating the appropriate words and that Keith is doing the same, but truthfully he's thinking about how fierce and sweet Keith looks now as Shiro glances obsessively back and forth between his brand new wedding ring and Keith’s face.

He also misses it when Sam pronounces them married and tells them to kiss, but he figures that one out pretty quickly because suddenly Keith is holding onto both sides of his face and hauling him down.

Their lips meet with surprising softness considering how quickly the kiss had begun, and it’s no work at all for Shiro to wrap one hand around Keith’s back and grab his hip with the other. Matt whoops somewhere in the background, and Ryou follows suit. Shiro’s face splits open in a grin, and he can feel Keith doing the same. It’s not enough to stop them, though—this is, after all, their first kiss as a married couple, so Shiro only starts to pull away when he can no longer ignore the loud celebration around them. Still, he keeps his forehead pressed to Keith’s, eyes closed, and lets the feeling wash over him.

As soon as they turn from each other, Tomoko attacks them both, and suddenly they’re being crowded in on all sides. Shiro tries to respond to it all, but he keeps glancing over at Keith and getting distracted. Judging by the way Keith also seems to keep getting distracted, he isn’t alone in the least.

“Alright,” Matt says when the massive group hug begins to break apart, clapping his hands together once and raising his arms to the eclipse hovering above them. “Who's ready to get lit?”

***

Shiro is exhausted by the time they make it to the hotel room. Keith drapes himself over Shiro’s back while Shiro tries to get the door open with the keycard—it takes him three tries before he realizes he’s putting it in backwards. Keith yawns and nuzzles his shoulder.

“A little tired there, baby?” Shiro asks with a laugh. They have to shuffle inside the door because Keith won’t let go.

“Long day,” Keith says. He tightens his arms around Shiro’s waist. “‘S our wedding night now.”

“Is it bad that all I want to do is pass out?” Shiro asks.

Keith laughs. “I know.” He slips a hand under Shiro’s shirt and runs his fingers through the thin line of hair there, his nails scratching lightly across the sensitive skin just above the waist of Shiro’s pants. Shiro shivers.

“That’s not exactly sleeping,” Shiro says. He feels marginally more awake now.

“I’m not _that_ tired. Come take a shower,” Keith says. His hand spreads out across Shiro’s belly, his pinky finger resting just underneath his pants. “Let me take care of you tonight.”

Shiro turns, and he looks down at Keith with a soft smile, leaning their foreheads together. “I love you.”

Keith kisses him quickly, and then grabs his hand and presses a longer kiss to his wedding band. “I love you too.”

Keith leads him to the bathroom by the hand. The room is much nicer than Shiro had expected—the bed is a huge king size, and the bathroom has a clawfoot tub separate from the big, tiled shower. Shiro is admiring the delicate, gilded frame of the mirror, and when he turns around, Keith has stripped his shirt off and is leaning in to turn on the shower.

Grabbing the little basket of hotel soaps, Shiro picks out shampoo, conditioner, and body soap, and he hands them to Keith to place on the shelf in the shower.

Keith winds his hand around Shiro’s tie and hauls him in, catching Shiro off guard. He sighs into Shiro’s mouth softly. “Maybe if we wake up early tomorrow we can spend some time playing with this, hm?” Keith whispers against his lips. Shiro shivers.

“Who’s getting tied up?” Shiro says, voice breathy from arousal.

Laughing lowly, Keith scrapes his teeth across Shiro’s bottom lip. “This time? Definitely you.”

Shiro kisses him slowly and deeply, savoring every hitch of breath and each flick of Keith’s tongue over his own. Keith’s fingers pluck at the knot of his tie, loosening it so he can slide it from around Shiro’s neck smoothly. When it’s off, he wraps it around his fingers on one hand and touches Shiro’s face to guide the tilt of his head and press deeper into his mouth.

“God,” Shiro says when he breaks away. “You’re perfect.”

“Off with this,” Keith says. His hands dance down the buttons of Shiro’s shirt, and his hands stroke down Shiro’s chest as soon as it’s open.

“I gotta—” Shiro says, trying to get at the buttons on his cuffs, but Keith pushes his hands away before he can open them.

“I’m on it,” Keith says. He pulls Shiro’s hand up, the one with the wedding ring, and presses a kiss to the base of each finger, lingering on his fourth. Holding Shiro’s gaze, Keith’s fingers find the little button, and he just—can’t get it undone.

“Need a little help?” Shiro asks, a grin spreading over his face.

“Nope, thank _you_ ,” Keith says. He examines the button critically and tries again. He gets it this time, now that he’s paying much more attention, and he follows suit on the second sleeve.

“There we go,” Shiro says Shiro rests his arms on top of Keith’s shoulders, hands laced together behind him, and giggles into Keith’s mouth.

Keith breaks the kiss but he doesn’t back away, his breath puffing against Shiro’s mouth. The soft sweep of his eyelashes is so beautiful, and Shiro drinks in the sight of him, eyes shut and so openly vulnerable. “We’re married,” he says.

Giddiness bubbles up in Shiro’s stomach and he laughs. “Fuck yeah we are,” he says, and he pulls Keith back in.

Somehow, they get the rest of their clothes off and bundle themselves into the shower. Shiro is too busy being unable to detach his lips from Keith’s to spend brain power on how exactly that happens, especially not once he has Keith completely bare against him, his skin soft and slick as the hot water beats down on them.

Keith presses him against the shower wall, the cool tile at his back a perfect counterpoint to Keith’s body. The exhaustion from earlier is completely gone—all Shiro can think about is Keith’s skin, Keith’s mouth, Keith’s hands tracing the outline of his abs and teasing at the tops of his thighs.

With a groan, Keith pulls his head back, so Shiro just slides his mouth down to his neck, mouthing at his jaw and sucking softly at the line of his throat.

“Let me wash your hair,” Keith gasps, and Shiro’s whole body throbs in response.

“Yeah,” he says, and bites the hinge of Keith’s jaw. His hands practically shaking as he strokes up and down Keith’s back, gripping at his ass, admiring the way his hands feel spread so his thumbs hook around the sides of Keith’s waist and his middle fingers just barely touch in the center of Keith’s spine.

Keith is intoxicating; Shiro is in love.

Keith moans. “Stop that,” he says, pulling one of Shiro’s hands away from his ass to lace their fingers together and press the back of Shiro’s hand against the shower wall. “I said I wanna take care of you tonight.”

“I know just how you can take care of me,” Shiro whispers into his ear, and he tugs Keith’s hand down to his cock.

Keith gives him one long teasing stroke, but then he huffs a laugh into Shiro’s shoulder and says, “Let me wash your hair first.”

“You got plans for tonight or something?” Shiro asks.

“Yes,” Keith says. His eyes flash when Shiro looks at him.

“Alright,” Shiro says after a moment, smile curling at his lips. “Can I wash your hair too?”

Bobbing his head, Keith snags the little shampoo bottle and pours it into his palm. He pushes his fingers through Shiro’s bangs, and when his other hand comes up to join it, Shiro moves his free hand back to Keith’s ass happily. He pulls Keith flush against him with a smirk, and Keith shakes his head and laughs.

“You’re terrible,” Keith says, and then he seals their lips together.

He kisses Shiro softly, slow like his fingers massaging through Shiro’s hair, licking deep into his mouth and kissing him so thoroughly that Shiro’s knees start to feel weak.

The scent of tea tree oil fills up with the steam of the shower. Shiro’s heart feels fit to burst; he’s got to be the luckiest man in the world right now, because he can’t imagine anything better than being held so tenderly and happily by the man he now can call his _husband_.

When Keith is done with his hair, Shiro returns the favor happily. Keith’s hair needs to be cut; it’s starting to curl around his ears and over his forehead. The heat between them is simmering—neither of them can completely calm down when they’re both slick and naked and pressed together, but it’s such a soft moment in the yellow light of the bathroom.

Once Keith’s hair is clean, he plants one hand on Shiro’s chest to keep him up against the wall, and he picks up the body wash, eyes burning a trail down Shiro’s body, teeth biting his own lip.

“Damn,” he says, under his breath. Shiro preens.

Keith’s attention is unwavering, his hands firm, and his teeth scrape up the column of his throat. He laughs darkly when Shiro chokes on a gasp in response.

“You’re so sensitive,” Keith murmurs. Shiro tries to respond, but then Keith’s fingers are rubbing his nipples, and it steals the words right out of his mouth. Keith’s thigh presses up between his legs, and Shiro pushes helplessly into the friction against his cock. He feels completely surrounded and overwhelmed in the best possible way—giving into Keith’s demands like this just makes him feel warm and loved.

He loses himself in the feeling of Keith’s hands running over him, letting Keith touch him all over. It’s almost more than he can handle; he’s so caught up in their mouths sliding together that he doesn’t even notice when Keith turns the water off.

“Come on,” Keith says, breathless and impatient, but he’s still gripping Shiro to him. “Want to take you _apart_.”

Shiro shivers as Keith’s voice dips into a growl, and he leads the way out of the shower. It’s a miracle that they manage to make it to the bed, and Keith climbs on top of Shiro before he’s even laying all the way down. Shiro pulls him in by the back of his neck, kissing him artlessly, but Keith moans into his mouth all the same.

There’s a frenzy taking over in Shiro’s mind, lighting him up from the inside with a litany of more more _more_ , but it’s completely at odds with the way he and Keith are kissing slowly but so deeply it makes his head spin. The embarrassingly romantic part of his brain is practically jumping for joy right now over the fact that Keith is his husband, and Shiro is _his_ husband in turn, and this is their wedding night, the reality of which Shiro had hardly considered until right this moment. He’s got the most beautiful man in the world kissing him like he would die without it, touching him like he’s something more precious than the world can comprehend, and Shiro’s just hoping Keith can feel one _half_ of what Shiro is feeling right now.

Shiro is so in love that it hurts.

He tries hard to pour every ounce of it into the way he kisses Keith. It’s transcendent, transforming, somehow better than the thought of being up among the stars. Going to space is the only thing Shiro ever really wanted before Keith, but now he lives in the reality where all Keith would have to do is ask, and Shiro would give up even that dream for him.

What makes it love is knowing that Keith never would.

With a last lingering kiss, Keith urges him to turn over, tugging a pillow out from under Shiro’s head to push it underneath his hips. Shiro wiggles into a more comfortable position, head laying on his folded arms and one leg hitched up just slightly. Keith tugs it further out.

His hands never leave Shiro’s skin, stroking down the planes of his back and up the sensitive skin of his thighs, and he says, “I had a different plan, but I think it’s changed.”

“What’s your plan?” Shiro says. He’s so comfortable—part of him thinks he could get off just like this, rolling his hips down into the sheets, maybe with Keith on top of him and rutting between his thighs. Yeah.

Wordlessly, Keith’s hands finally slide to his ass, pulling and digging his thumbs into the skin. Sighing happily, Shiro prepares himself for the sound of the lube bottle clicking open, but what he gets instead is a hot breath of air over his hole that sends his mind spiraling.

“Fuck, _Keith_ ,” he groans. “You don’t have to—”

“Shush” Keith says, and then he’s dragging the flat of his tongue over Shiro’s hole in one long, sure stoke. It sends electric sparks dancing up Shiro’s spine.

“God, I love you,” Shiro chokes out as his grip on the blankets tightens. Keith is slow and methodical, ripping away Shiro’s sanity piece by piece as he works Shiro over with his mouth. It’s simultaneously too much and not enough—it feels so good that Shiro can barely _handle_ it, but he wants more, wants something filling him up and not just teasing at his entrance.

When Keith pulls back to bite at his thighs, Shiro actually whines, a wordless plea for Keith to stop messing around and torturing him. Keith laughs, a short, delighted sound, and he sucks a bruise into the delicate skin of Shiro’s inner thigh. Shiro moans at the feeling—it’s just this side of ticklish, but Keith’s touch is firm instead of teasing, and the line of kisses he trails back up to Shiro’s hole makes him want to beg.

The point of Keith’s tongue traces maddening patterns over him, and Shiro’s hips can’t decide if they want to push forward or back, but he does know that he still wants _more_.

“Fuck, that’s good,” he says, and shifts into the feeling of Keith’s hand gripping his ass tighter.

He swears with feeling when Keith’s mouth leaves again, only for his hands to resettle to pull him open wider, and the long, open-mouthed kiss Keith lays on him is so filthy and good that Shiro’s whole body quivers at the sensation. It flips a switch inside of him. “Good,” Shiro pants. He reaches back to touch Keith’s hair, finds himself incapable of not threading his fingers through Keith’s hair. “You're so good to me, fuck.” Moaning in agreement, Keith presses his entire body forward even more, pushing one of Shiro’s thighs to the side to make more room for his shoulders.

Keith doesn’t get off on being in charge, necessarily. Shiro had thought that’s what it was, at first, when he had been so invested in having Shiro underneath him like this. What he likes, though, Shiro knows now, is Shiro unable to contain himself, Shiro so overwhelmed by what he's feeling that he's almost incoherent. Keith says things like _I'm going to take you apart_ and means he’s going to tear Shiro to pieces until he’s little more than a pliant puddle tearing up on the mattress.

Shiro feels so good that he could cry right now, if he's honest.

“Just like that, Keith,” Shiro says. He hitches his knee up higher, uses his free hand to help hold himself open, and babbles about just how _good_ Keith is until Keith is moaning like he's the one getting eaten out. Keith covers Shiro's hand with his own and rubs his thumb on Shiro's brand new wedding ring, and that tiny, simple action rips Shiro's world cleanly apart.

“Get the lube,” he says. “Fingers, cmon, I need—”

But Keith is already there with him, and as soon as his mouth disappears he has the tip of his index finger rubbing the Shiro's rim, touch too light to be anything but frustrating.

Shiro is patient, though, knows that Keith is looking his fill, enjoying getting to play. When he finally sinks his finger inside, it's soft and slow, pressing in steadily and pushing a satisfied moan out of Shiro's mouth. He lets Keith take his time to move up to two fingers, and when he does, Shiro thinks that nothing in the world could possibly be better than this, than Keith rapturously watching his own fingers spreading Shiro apart. It's familiar and electric all together, the way his fingers twist on the pull back and dive back in with all the focus and drive Keith shows for everything else in his life.

Keith's mouth joins back in with the third finger, licking around where his fingers are working Shiro open.

“Such a good boy,” Shiro says, breathless. “You're so good for me, yes.”

With a moan, Keith pulls his mouth away and says, “Please,” perfectly desperate and pretty. The sound makes Shiro’s hips stutter forward, but he doesn’t break.

“Not yet,” he answers, rolling his hips down onto the bed, craving the feeling of _something_. Even just that tiny bit of fiction heightens everything and so Shiro does it again, delighting in the way it makes a perfect counterpoint to Keith's fingers hitting that perfect spot inside him.

When Shiro can't stand it anymore, he urges Keith back, twisting away from Keith so he can roll over. Keith's eyes are wide and hungry as he stares down at Shiro, his chest flushed pink with excitement and cock hard between his legs. He looks at Shiro like he forgot the ŕest of the world exists, and being under the encompassing view of that gaze makes Shiro feel powerful.

Keith leans down to kiss him, almost two sweet to fit the heat Shiro feels all over.

“Inside,” Shiro says, hooking one leg around Keith's hips. “Need you, come on.”

“Yeah,” Keith answers, and then he’s slicking himself up and pressing the head of his cock against Shiro, gaze caught moving between Shiro’s face and his cock.

Shiro groans as he sinks inside, head falling back to the pillow and eyes slipping shut in pleasure. It's a stretch, but he's so relaxed and open from Keith's careful attentions and his own desire—fuck, it's been way too long since they've done this. He welcomes it, eager for the way Keith makes him feel.

“That's it, baby,” Shiro says. Keith leans down for another kiss, and Shiro meets him with fervor, hands grasping at Keith's shoulders.

The way they move together is like coming home. Keith knows every spot to hit, exactly how fast to move, how hard to go to make Shiro's entire body sing. Keith leans over him with one hand propping him up and the other tilting Shiro's head up for a kiss, as if he can’t pull himself away.

Shiro moans into his mouth and tugs Keith even tighter against him so he can keep Keith close.

“We’re married,” Keith gasps when their mouths separate, too distracted by the rest of their bodies to really keep the kiss going.

“Really?” Shiro asks, hooking one ankle around the back of Keith’s thigh to encourage just the slightest change in angle so that— _yes_. “I don’t—I don’t remember that. Did we?”

Keith snaps his hips in and holds them there as he stares down at Shiro disbelievingly, jaw dropped open just a little bit. “Who even _are_ you,” he says, offended, and Shiro breaks down into laughter, burying his face in Keith’s shoulder.

“Love you,” he offers, but Keith just shakes his head in disbelief as he starts to move again in an easy rhythm, stealing the breath from Shiro’s lungs.

“I married an idiot,” Keith says, but there’s no bite in his voice.

“Yeah, but the important part is you married him and he’s yours now.” Keith nails a damn good angle and Shiro has to struggle to keep talking. “No—ah, no take backs.”

“Shut _up_ ,” Keith groans.

Shiro smirks, and he can tell that Keith already knows what he’s about to say. “Make me.”

With an aggravated groan, Keith pulls back enough to grab both of Shiro’s legs, hooking his knees over Keith’s elbows and diving back down so that Shiro’s knees are pressed as close to his chest as they can go. Strength training hasn’t left him particularly bendy, not like Keith and his obsession with acrobatics, but it’s more than enough for this.

Electricity zips up Shiro’s spine as Keith comes in for a kiss, teeth tugging at Shiro’s bottom lip and tongue prying his mouth open. There’s something about their laughter in bed that always does it for Shiro, makes him suddenly wound up and aching, and now he’s chasing every last bit of sensation Keith offers him. Eyes screwed shut, Shiro throws his head back in a moan, starting to feel that seemingly endless build up of warmth deep within the pit of his belly.

Above him, he recognizes Keith’s wild look as his hips start snapping harder, cock angled just right inside of Shiro so that it makes him crazy.

“Shiro, I'm—I'm—”

“Hold on for me, baby, come on, just a little longer,” Shiro says, panting. He's chasing his own orgasm, and the determined way Keith looks down at him with a furrowed brow and an open mouth lights him up inside. “That's it, just like that, baby, you're so good for me, my good boy.”

“Takashi—”

It's that breathless gasp of his own name that sets Shiro off, makes him sob out a loud moan as his back arches and his toes curl. Keith's hitting the most perfect spot inside him, and Shiro matches his rhythm stroke for stroke as he jerks himself, almost crying from how good it feels to come around Keith holding him open like this. His chest spatters with white and he's being held, _cradled_ , in Keith's arms and it's—its perfect.

“I love you,” is the first thing he says when his mouth can move again. He words are wrecked and slurred, but Keith is babbling it back to him and begging, please, please.

“I need—please, I.”

Keith looks destroyed, looks like he's experiencing something too good to contain. He's still grinding his hips in deep, sending these beautiful aftershocks through Shiro's body. He feels shivery, limbs weak, and as he stares up at Keith, he says, “Kiss me.”

Keith whines—it’s not what he wants, but he dives right down, pressing his mouth sloppily to Shiro's. His hand finds Shiro's, curling their fingers together, and just when the overstimulation is starting to hit that edge of too much, too fast, Shiro says, “Come, baby, come for me.” And Keith does, his beautiful face screwed up into something rapturous as his hips stutter forward.

He's so beautiful, and Shiro tugs him back down to kiss his cheeks, forehead, nose, mouth. Keith pants as he starts to collapse down, and Shiro puts his arms around him and tugs Keith to his chest.

Together, they come down, and Shiro's eyes are slipping shut uncontrollably when Keith says, “That was good.”

“Turns out, I love married sex,” Shiro says.

“Thought you didn’t remember getting married,” Keith retorts, but he’s too busy catching his breath for it to be as menacing and dark as he’s trying for.

“Like I could ever forget you, baby,” Shiro says fondly. Keith doesn’t answer, just worms a leg in between Shiro’s and latches onto him like a leech, unbothered by the stickiness drying between them.

Through a yawn, Keith says, “Like I’d let you.”

Smiling fondly down at the dark head of hair laying in his chest, Shiro pauses, just for a second, to send out a couple prayers, thanking the universe and asking that he get to keep this small, perfect slice of happiness. After all, he thinks, you never know who’s listening.

***

Predictably, Iverson loses his shit when Shiro hands over a copy of his new marriage license along with an updated mission contacts form, Keith’s name proudly displayed on both papers. “Need I remind you, _Ensign_ Shirogane, fraternization between officers and cadets is completely _fucking_ prohibited?” Iverson snarls. He grips the photocopy so hard it crumples. “This is a serious abuse of power and authority, and I will _not_ have you jeopardizing the Kerberos mission because you can’t keep it in your goddamn pants!”

“With all due respect, sir,” Shiro says, breaking into his prepared speech with a level voice. He refuses to betray how hard his hands are shaking behind his back. “Cadet Kogane and I have known each other well and maintained a close friendship since I was still a cadet myself. Furthermore, I have never been in a position of power over him as a TA, a test proctor, an official tutor or mentor, or in any other capacity here at the Garrison.” He pauses. “I admit that we may have . . . bent some rules regarding interpersonal fraternization, but there are no rules explicitly forbidding officers _or_ cadets from being married, provided all the appropriate paperwork is filed with the superior officer. Which I’m doing now, of course.”

Iverson looks like he’s bitten into a lemon, and his face is practically purple with anger. Shiro surreptitiously crosses his fingers and hopes that he has the power of the federal legal system on his side for this one.

“I don’t want this leaking to the press,” he finally says. Iverson looks absolutely murderous. “I haven’t observed any conduct previously that led me to believe that— _this_ was in the future, and I expect that to remain as such until the launch. We do not need the distraction of your goddamn shotgun wedding right now to impact public opinion.” Dramatically, Iverson pulls a thick file folder labeled _Shirogane, T._ out of his desk and slams the drawer back shut. “You’re already well aware of the uncertainty surrounding your abilities as a distinctively young pilot.”

“Yes, sir.” Shiro inclines his head respectfully, crossed fingers relaxing.

Iverson leans back in his chair and stares at Shiro. “If we weren’t three weeks from launch, Shirogane, I would make sure you were disciplined severely. Just because you’re married now doesn’t mean your relationship before you signed this paper is above board now.”

“Yes sir.”

“Get the fuck out of my office.”

Shiro snaps a perfect salute and turns on his heel to leave. He finds Keith hovering just outside of the door, and he looks nervous when Shiro comes out.

“Are we in trouble?” Keith says, falling into step beside Shiro as they turn to talk down the hallway.

“Iverson is going to murder us if he sees any behavior that indicates we’re in a relationship,” Shiro says, “but other than that, there’s nothing he can do.”

“Really? Just like that?”

“Yeah, baby,” Shiro says as they arrive at his door and he keys in his lock code. “Just like that.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yo, let me know what you thought! check me out on tumblr @[disloyalpunk](http://disloyalpunk.tumblr.com) and let's talk about how LIT season 5 was!!!
> 
> also just like. huge shout out to my main dude @[eternal-heatstroke](http://eternal-heatstroke.tumblr.com) who puts up with all my bs, listens to my dumb headcanons, and edits this dang fic into something consumable.


	5. defiant // june 8, 2078

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is, frankly, the chapter that got away from me and that got mostly written during my finals, so here we go!

The final weeks leading up to the launch are a whirlwind. Shiro has until the Monday after their wedding to hold Keith in his arms in relative peace, and then it’s off, across the country to another Garrison base near Orlando in order to finish the last of his training with the Holts. They live and breathe emergency training, field medicine, protocol, engineering, zero-G training—everything. Shiro has studied all of it before, but there’s a new intensity and specificity now. It isn’t about catching them up to speed on anything they might have missed, but rather emphasizing the most relevant skills and familiarizing themselves with the available equipment that they'll have while on Kerberos.

Iverson stresses the importance of making sure that each person of their tiny crew knows how to fix all but the most complex of potential mechanical issues. They unpack and repack all of the supplies in a perfect replica of the _Defiant_ craft three times until they can recite everything on board from memory. Then Iverson makes them go through a five day survival training where Shiro loses six pounds; Matt loses four. Nobody listens when Shiro insists that this isn’t necessary, and it pricks at the back of his mind the whole time he’s starving himself to preserve rations.

Shiro spends the rest of the time running himself into the ground alongside Matt and Sam. When Iverson finally clears them to leave, Shiro still isn’t quite sure that he’s completely ready to launch into space. It feels like too much to ask of him.

Keith—who is his _husband_ , Shiro reminds himself each time he thinks of him because the novelty is still exhilarating—is already in his room when Shiro finally gets back on base. Shiro drops his bag just inside the door, opens his arms, and Keith barrels into them, clinging tightly to Shiro in silence. Shiro rocks him from side to side a little, presses his lips to the side of Keith’s head, and breathes in the smell of his shampoo. God, but Shiro aches inside with this. He’s never been so excited for something in his entire life, but his heart clenches with the knowledge that their minutes are dwindling quickly.

“Missed you,” Keith mumbles into his chest.

“I swear I spent every free second thinking about how I could still take you with us,” he admits, and Keith laughs quietly. His breath puffs out against Shiro’s collar bone.

“Guess I could always just sneak on board. They wouldn’t know until it’s too late.”

“Call it spousal privileges,” Shiro teases. It’s hard to keep the levity in his voice, but Shiro melts when Keith looks up at him, mouth hanging open just slightly. His eyes sparkle like an embarrassing cartoon character, and it's so, so endearing. “Fuck, I love you,” Shiro says in a helpless rush, and Keith bites his lip, face crumpling.

Keith leans forward again so his forehead bumps up against Shiro’s shoulder. “I hate that you’re leaving,” he says in the smallest voice.

“I know,” Shiro says quietly, because what else is there to say?

“I want you to—to go do this amazing thing, but I _hate_ it. You’re going to be in history books, and—and all I can think about is that you’re going to be gone.”

It hurts to see him like this, cowering underneath a pain that Shiro cannot heal or take away.

“I hate it, too,” he confesses. Silently, they hold each other, and Shiro works on memorizing the way Keith feels tucked against him. He has a lot to memorize before he leaves.

“How was the training camp?” Keith asks after a while. He’s drawing Shiro further into the room, and Shiro lets Keith push him down onto the bed, feet dangling off the side so he doesn’t dirty the covers with his boots. The sheets are already wrinkled—Keith spent time here, even with Shiro gone.

“Long,” Shiro says, rubbing one hand up and down Keith’s arm slowly. “You wouldn’t believe how many times I thought the day was almost over only to find out it wasn’t even lunch time.” Shiro is usually very in tune with lunchtime, which he prides himself on, but the training boot camp had been so brutal that he often found himself starving for a meal with two hours still to go until a break. The last time he was that physically and emotionally exhausted was when he was still a student studying for his final qualifications exams.

Keith frowns as Shiro tells him this. “Sounds like you need to rest.”

“Only if you stay with me,” Shiro mumbles, but his eyes are already slipping closed.

“Of course,” Keith says, but he starts to move away. Shiro whines—undignified but to the point, thanks—and Keith shushes him. “You’ll thank me later,” he says, fingers plucking at the laces of Shiro’s boots.

Keith helps tug off his boots, jacket, and pants before urging Shiro up so he can pull the covers over him. Shiro’s heart grows three sizes in his chest at the feeling of Keith taking care of him like this, shamelessly loving.

Before he rejoins Shiro on the bed, Keith grabs his statistics textbook and a sheaf of papers. “Sleep, okay?” Keith says, kissing him on the forehead. “I’ve got finals to study for.” Shiro hums in response, snuggling down into the bed and pressing his face against Keith’s hip. The rough fabric of his jeans is somehow the best thing Shiro has felt since he got home.

***

Shiro wakes to the realization that Keith is the light of his life, the very soul within his chest, the only reason he exists, the—

“Shiro, shut the fuck up, it’s just cafeteria mac and cheese.”

“You stole this for _me_ ,” Shiro says in awe, staring at the Tupperware container in Keith’s hands. It’s ridiculously huge; Shiro doesn’t even know where he got it or how he managed to fill it to the brim with macaroni without getting in trouble. “Marry me, Keith. Marry me right now.”

“We already did that,” Keith says, but he’s blushing.

“I know,” Shiro says dreamily. He pushes himself into a sitting position as Keith hands him the tub of macaroni, and then his hands go to his pockets and he pulls out a smaller container filled with bacon pieces. Shiro wants to cry. “But I’ll marry you again, don’t think I won’t. Stolen bacon mac and cheese is a whole new level of devotion.”

Snorting, Keith snags two bowls and spoons out of Shiro’s desk and clambers onto the bed next to him. “Hurry up and open it so we can eat instead of staring at it.”

It’s still so hot that steam wafts off the top, and the smell of cheese and carbs wafting up towards Shiro is heavenly. Iverson had insisted on their training diet comprised only of bland-tasting but nutrient-dense nonperishable astronaut food. Shiro wants to cheer at this meal, but that would be embarrassing, so he settles for serving them both heaping bowls of macaroni. There’s still so much macaroni left over that he’s already dreaming of leftovers. Or a second and third helping, whichever comes first.

“Why did I ever think you were cool?” Keith says, but his voice is too amused for his words to have any bite.

“You were definitely misled on that one,” Shiro says, attempting to critically measure out the right amount of bacon to balance between this and future servings of macaroni. “I've never been cool.” He throws Keith a wink.

Keith is distinctly unimpressed. “Did you know that when you do that, your other eye twitches but doesn't close?”

“Matt told me it's a charming character flaw,” Shiro says.

“Is it?” Keith says. When Shiro pouts at him, he raises his eyebrows with a shit-eating grin.

“You know, the mac and cheese tells me you love me, but this conversation is telling me something else.” To punctuate his point, Shiro stuffs a huge bite into his mouth. It's _so_ damn good. Through his mouthful, Shiro says, “I'm getting mixed signals, you know.”

“Stop,” Keith says, laughing. “That's so gross, Takashi, what the hell.”

Shiro swallows and pats Keith on the knee in sympathy. “Ouch, your husband is gross too, huh? Maybe you and I should hook up instead.”

Keith shoves at his shoulder, but he's still practically giggling, refusing to look Shiro in the eye. Shiro chases him to lay his head on his shoulder and snuggle in. “You're the worst, you _are_.”

“Aww, baby, you know you're the only one I'd cheat on my husband with,” Shiro says, nuzzling Keith's neck. “Don't be like that, you know that other than my husband—who shall remain nameless for the purposes of this conversation—you're the only one I need.”

“That doesn't even make any sense.” Keith cranes his neck to stare at him. “You don't make any sense.”

“You're the only sense I need,” Shiro says, and he looks up at Keith with wide, innocent eyes. He stuffs more macaroni in his mouth.

“They did something to you at that training camp,” Keith says very seriously. “You’re not the man I married.”

“Or am I? Maybe I’ve just been playing a long game.”

“I don’t think you’ve ever played a long game in your life,” Keith says.

Shiro laughs. “Yeah. You’re right.”

“Eat your damn macaroni,” Keith says, knocking his shoulder into Shiro’s with a laugh. “You know I had to sneak past seven different cafeteria workers with that container? And I got stopped by the security guard staffing the door to the officer’s wing.”

“What for? All the guards know you come in here.” Shiro glances suspiciously at the door in case one of them decides to check in.

Keith snorts, and says, “Nah, they just asked me what the cafeteria was serving so they could get dinner after their shift. I think they approved of my theft.”

“One of us, one of us,” Shiro chants, and he _delights_ in the way Keith actually throws his head back and laughs, the joy bubbling out of him. It strikes Shiro again how beautiful he is—the soft sweep of his eyelashes over his cheekbones, the gently upturned point of his nose, the long line of his jaw, his short bangs curling over his forehead. He's everything Shiro ever wanted and more, and the one thing he never even asked for.

Suddenly, Shiro’s heart starts to ache.

“What’s that look for?”

Shiro looks at him, sitting on their bed with his feet curled up underneath him and eating stolen cafeteria macaroni out of a bowl that Shiro liberated from the cafeteria about four years ago. “I’m just . . . really gonna miss you.”

Keith slows to a stop, staring down at his food. The slope of his shoulders changes minutely, slipping down and making him look small and sad, which is absolutely not what Shiro meant to do.

“Baby,” Shiro pleads.

“It was hard,” Keith admits haltingly. “While you were gone the last two weeks.”

Shiro’s heart _wrenches_. “Just me and Matt were gone, though,” he says encouragingly. “Everyone else was still here.”

Shaking his head slowly, Keith’s mouth twists. “I mean, it was fine. I just . . . spent a lot of time alone. Got a lot of homework done.” He taps his spoon on the side of the bowl, considering. “It _was_ fine.”

“But,” Shiro says. He knows there’s a but.

Keith blows out a frustrated sigh. “It was _fine_. I’ve been on my own before, this shouldn’t be that different.” He shakes his head and stabs at the last of his macaroni to stuff it in his mouth. “I’ll just have to get used to it again.”

“Keith, you _know_ that Corinne and Jeavonna and everyone will still hang out with you, it’s not like—”

“I know that!” Keith snaps. He shakes his head and takes a deep breath, pushing it out through his nose. “But they have jobs, and I see them, what, twice a week? Shiro, I spend hours with you every single _day_. This was the first time since before we started dating that I spent more than three nights in a row sleeping in my own dorm.” He clenches his hand into a fist to stop it from shaking. “I just—I knew it wouldn’t be easy, but I didn’t think it would be like this.”

“I—I’m sorry, Keith, I didn’t realize,” Shiro says softly. “If I had known, I would have never—”

“Never fucking _what_?” Keith interrupts with a snarl. “Never would have married me? Never would have accepted the Kerberos mission? Shiro, there’s nothing you can do, okay, I just have to. I have to deal with this.”

Shiro stares into his empty bowl and feels tears well up in his eyes. “You’re right,” he says, voice thick. “I’m sorry.” Guilt wells up in him but he doesn’t know how to confront it. This is the reality they accepted when they started their relationship, when they became friends, hell, when they decided to come to the Garrison in the first place. One of them was always going to have to leave.

“Please don’t be.” Keith’s voice sounds raw. “You—I’m so proud of you. I’m excited. I think I got too caught up in that, though.” _I forgot I was going to be alone_ , he doesn’t say, but Shiro hears it anyway. “Sorry. I killed the mood.”

“Don’t say that,” Shiro says fiercely. He takes Keith’s bowl from his hands and puts it on the floor with his, and then starts to draw Keith in. “I don’t want you to keep this stuff from me, okay? Even if you think it’s gonna upset me, or whatever. We’re in this together.”

Keith presses the tip of his nose into the hollow of Shiro’s throat and clutches him tightly. He stays silent for a beat. “Sorry I yelled,” he mutters.

“It’s fine,” Shiro says, and he means it. “We’re both upset, this is a lot to deal with.”

“Still.” Keith shuffles around. “I don’t like to yell at _you_.”

“I know,” Shiro says, kissing the side of his head. “That’s why _I’m_ the one you married and not any of those other dicks you like to yell at, right?”

“Uh. Sure.”

Shiro chuckles but doesn’t push Keith anymore. They settle in slowly, getting more comfortable with each shift of their bodies. Keith’s fingers rub at the back of his neck, fingernails scratching at the base of his buzzed hair and dragging down to massage lightly on either side of his spine. With a sigh, Shiro pushes up the back of Keith’s shirt and settles his hand there, part possessiveness and part desire for closeness.

“D’you think you’re ready?” Keith asks.

“We launch in a week,” Shiro says. The answer comes out automatically because that’s how everyone spoke during training: launch is in twenty-three days, eighteen days, fifteen days. The countdown ticks like a bomb in Shiro’s head during every waking hour. “Everything is ready to go and the crew has finished all their training, so there’s nothing left to do besides run preflight checks.”

Keith doesn’t respond for a moment. “Don’t give me that shit,” he finally says, sounding annoyed. “I’m not the press. You don’t have to lie to me.”

Letting out a steadying breath, Shiro clutches Keith tighter against him. He just doesn’t know what to say. Nothing with Keith has ever been too much, but that question might be. “We launch in a week,” Shiro repeats. “I have to be.”

“Not with me,” Keith says, still sore, but Shiro doesn’t know what to do about that right now. Instead, he rolls them over so Keith is on his back and Shiro can hide his face in Keith’s chest to block out the rest of the world. Keith smells like Old Spice and himself, something soft and musky that doesn’t have a name except for plain human. It’s earthy and grounding, and Shiro is going to miss it so, so much, locked away in a metal drum hurtling through the black emptiness of space.

“Can we talk about something else?” Shiro mutters. It’s unfair to ask of Keith, but Shiro is still exhausted from training and he just wants to stop thinking about this mission.

Keith’s fingers start moving again, carding through his hair in something like forgiveness. “If you want,” he says. He’s so good to Shiro, holding him like this and letting him deal with his own problems when he needs it.

Bit by bit, Keith relaxes underneath him, and Shiro positively melts into the contact.

The skin of Keith’s ribs is so soft under his hand, and it takes a lot of effort to shift his brain from that to saying words. “How’s finals?” he asks lazily.

“Easy,” Keith says. “I’ve only got one exam, the rest of them are sim runs.”

“You just wait for your final year, it’s gonna be anything but easy,” Shiro warns.

“Well, my number one distraction is going to be somewhere on the other side of the solar system, so I think I’ll be okay,” Keith says.

Shiro pinches his side lightly, but Keith doesn’t even twitch. “See if I ever pass on my wise, learned advice to you now.” Against his will, Shiro’s eyes start to slip shut.

“I’ve got some advice for you,” Keith says. “How are you going to shave in space?”

_What does that—_

“Because I was thinking about that time after you graduated and got promoted to officer, and you tried to grow a goatee, and—” Keith breaks off, choking on his breathless laughter, and Shiro’s face starts to go bright red. He burned and deleted all the pictures from those incredibly unfortunate three months. “You have no idea what I went through when you did that, I had to rethink having a crush on you it was so bad.”

“Shut up,” Shiro says, burying his face back in Keith’s chest to hide his shame. Keith isn’t wrong—Shiro had known it was bad at the time, honestly, but he was so determined to believe that maybe if he just spent enough time growing it out to the proper length and grooming it carefully that eventually it might start to sit right on his face. He was an officer at twenty years old; he just wanted to look less like a teenager when he was walking through the officer quarters in his new gray uniform.

Keith chuckles, deep in his chest, and it rocks Shiro’s body. “The worst part is,” Keith says, hand rubbing soothingly at the back of Shiro’s head, “I knew if your terrible facial hair wasn’t enough to make me fall out of love with you, nothing would. You could get really ugly and I’d still want you.”

“That’s terrible advice,” Shiro grumbles, but his heart is beating double time in his chest and he’s blushing for an entirely different reason now.

Keith hums, and he shifts as he stretches up to press a kiss to Shiro’s mouth. “Love you. I advise you don’t come back from Kerberos with a beard, though,” he says, and Shiro huffs. Probably he should be offended, but he can’t quite muster up the energy. Mostly he just wants to lay here and zone out.

“I’m gonna go wash these dishes,” Shiro says through a yawn. He levers himself up off Keith’s chest and stands. “You should pull up a movie or something. Whatever you want.”

“Whatever I want?” Keith asks.

Shiro’s eyes slide back over to him. “ _Please_ no horror movies. Please. For me, your husband, and my well-being.”

“But I like it when you get scared and hold onto me,” Keith says, begging Shiro with just his eyes.

“They give me _nightmares_ , Keith, please,” Shiro whines, rolling over to bury his face in the pillows. He sighs, because he knows if Keith asks one more time he’ll give in, and it’s only a matter of time.

“Fine.” _Mercy._ “But only ‘cause I like you.” Keith pokes him in the side of the head. “And I won’t even put on something like _The Da Vinci Code_ that isn’t scary but still scares you.”

“You said you’d never bring that up again,” Shiro says, betrayed.

“I never agreed to that.”

Shiro opens his mouth to retort, but Keith is scrolling through a list of movies on Shiro’s PADD and the whole scene strikes Shiro as too perfect to interrupt. There are some things he does out of love. So he hauls his ass into the bathroom with their dishes, scrubbing them clean before returning them to his desk drawer and sticking the rest of the mac and cheese in the illegally rigged up mini fridge behind the desk.

“Hey, what’s all this paperwork for?” Shiro asks, poking curiously at an envelope on top of the desk with Keith’s mailing address on it.

Keith’s head snaps up. “No, wait, that’s not—” Keith says frantically, but it’s too late.

Shiro is a respectful kind of guy. He’d never go through Keith’s mail or any of his stuff, especially once Keith asked him not to touch something, so he tries to tear his gaze away in time, but it’s sitting _right there_ on top of the desk in big letters. The words swim together for a moment, but he’s—he’s definitely not imagining this.

“Keith, I—I don’t understand.” He gapes at the envelope. “I didn’t mean to see it, I promise, but I just—”

Groaning loudly, Keith slaps his hands over his face and says through his fingers, “Fuck, just open it. I was gonna tell you later; I forgot I left it out.”

With shaking fingers, Shiro picks up the little white envelope, emblazoned in the corner with the logo of the Arizona state government. It’s already open, so he flips up the lip of the envelope and pulls out the plastic card inside. It’s Keith’s new driver’s license. Keith _Shirogane’s_ new driver’s license.

“Did you really—?” Shiro asks hoarsely.

He flips the plastic over and over in his hands, as if he’s going to find some sort of secret that tells him this is actually fake. He dares to look up at Keith and finds his face colored bright red but set in a determined expression.

“I did,” Keith says. He looks distinctly nervous. “I just figured—well. I mean, I don’t really know anything about my family. So. Why not?”

Shiro is speechless. He stares down at it, at the little _Shirogane comma Keith_ written in capital letters, followed by his date of birth, height, weight, and the little heart marking him as a registered organ donor. It’s real. It’s the last thing Shiro ever expected to find, but in just a second, he’s ecstatic with joy.

He manages to rip his eyes away to look at Keith, who’s gripping the bed sheets tightly with his fingers and staring at Shiro nervously.

“I don’t have to—”

“No,” Shiro chokes out. “No, it’s perfect. Keith, I . . . .” He doesn’t know what to say, and he tells Keith that. He can feel the shock written all over his face. Slowly, he manages to stagger all the way over to Keith and then he’s falling to his knees next to the bed. Shiro tosses the ID on the side table and takes Keith’s face between two careful hands so he can bring their foreheads together. Shiro sucks in a ragged breath. “I love you,” he says thickly. “I love you so much.”

“I know. I know you do,” Keith whispers. Thank god for that.

***

Shiro knocks on the office door and waits quietly as it slides open. “Lieutenant Commander Holt,” he says, stepping inside with a snappy salute.

“Oh, Shiro! Come in, come in,” Sam says motioning him forward. “And, please, how many times do I have to tell you, just call me Sam! I did officiate your wedding, after all.” Sam throws Shiro a wink, and Shiro laughs, ducking his head in embarrassment.

“Sorry, uh, Sam. How are you?” Shiro sits down in one of the chairs in front of his desk.

“I’m good, just great,” Sam says. He taps at something on the screen of his PADD and then sets it aside. “Glad to be back from training! How are you doing?”

“Oh, fine,” Shiro says. He’s struggling with how to move this conversation forward. “Kind of shocked that the launch is coming up so soon.”

“Time sure has flown, hasn’t it?” Sam says, laughing a little. He studies Shiro for a moment. “You’re looking a tad upset. Anything I can help you with today?”

Shiro grimaces. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to make it so . . . obvious.” Sam shrugs a little, and smiles at Shiro to continue. “It’s of a personal nature.”

“Trouble in paradise already?” Sam asks. With anyone else, it might be a joke, but his tone is legitimately concerned as he leans forward in his seat and frowns.

“No,” Shiro says, shaking his head. His eyes drop to the desk between them as he tries to figure out how to phrase this question. “It is about Keith though. I just—I mean, you know him, he’s come to your house with Matt and me before. He doesn’t hang out with a lot of people, he doesn’t even _like_ a lot of people.” Shiro’s voice cracks. “I don’t want him to be alone again.”

Sam sighs, heavy and sad. “I won’t lie to you, Shiro, I worry about that boy. He just about looks at you like you hung every single star in the sky.”

“There’s gotta be something I can _do_ ,” Shiro says. He feels completely helpless, but everything in him is screaming that he needs to fix this, to make sure that Keith doesn’t have to fucking get used to being alone—he never should.

With a sympathetic gaze, Sam eyes him, eyebrows drawn together. “You know, years ago, I had my first mission in space. It was one year aboard the ISS, and I got the assignment just before we found out Colleen was pregnant with Matt. He was only three months old when I left.”

“That must have been hard,” Shiro says.

“Oh, it was.” Sam chuckles humorlessly. “I missed my son’s first birthday, first word—first everything, just about. And, you know, Colleen recorded it all and we would video chat at least every single night so I could say goodnight to the both of them, but I don’t think a single day ever went by up there when I didn’t want to go back home. There’s no amount of messaging or video calls that can make up for being with your family.

“And it was especially hard for Colleen—she took family leave to take care of Matt, and her sister and parents tried to come out to visit as much as they could, but she was alone more days than not.” Sam sighs, pensive.

“Would you do it again?” Shiro asks. Sam closes his eyes briefly.

“I still ask myself that,” he admits. “And I still don’t know the answer. I published my first paper as head of a scientific experiment based on the work I did up there, but I missed the first year of my son’s life to do that.” Sam pauses, thumbs slowly twiddling. “I wish there was some sort of advice I could give you, Shiro, but the truth is . . . the truth is, this life is hard. It’s gotten easier—I’ve had a few more missions that weren’t quite so difficult for Colleen and me, and maybe that had to do with us not having a newborn baby. But like I said, it’s only gotten easier. It’s never been easy.”

“It’s worth it, then,” Shiro says. His voice is small like a child’s.

Sam smiles, a sharp, sad thing that says more than words ever could. “I can’t say. I really hope so. But, Colleen and I are still very much in love with each other. We’ve raised two brilliant children together, even though I think both of us would have liked to be around at home a lot more than we were. It’s not all doom and gloom. You and Keith will be okay—he’ll learn what he needs to do to survive just as much as you will.”

“I . . . really needed to hear that,” Shiro says. “All of it. Thank you.”

“Of course, Shiro. This is the part they don’t train you for in all of these classes you take to get here,” Sam says honestly. “And the truth is, they can’t train you for it—nothing quite prepares you for how very much alone you will feel when you’re out there. Even when you’re living on top of your crew mates.”

“Good thing I had a couple of years already to get used to Matt’s snoring,” Shiro says dryly, and Sam throws his head back in laughter.

“I’ve requisitioned ear plugs be put on board for all of us,” Sam says with a shrug. “Unfortunately, the snoring is very much genetic.”

Shiro leaves Sam’s office feeling—not lighter, exactly, but maybe like he’s finally gotten the knowledge he needed. He doesn’t have regrets about any of this, or maybe he’s just too foolish to know what exactly he has regrets about. But as the days count down, seemingly moving faster and faster, these new realities are becoming abundantly clear.

The reality is that despite how much access Keith has to information about Shiro and the mission, they’re still going to be out of the loop with each other. No matter how many messages they get to write or how many pictures Shiro has printed out to take with him, nothing is going to fill the gap of seeing, hearing, or feeling Keith as a physical part of his life.

This is one of those cases where love maybe isn’t enough on its own. But if it’s not, then this is why when they got married Shiro swore not only to love Keith but also to _commit_ to him. It’s a promise he holds fiercely guarded in his heart.

***

“I'm going to fail my exams,” Keith announces at dinner approximately five days before his very first week of exams at the Garrison begins. Shiro stares in shock, but the rest of the table just looks vaguely amused. This is, notably, the first time Keith has ever instigated a conversation since Shiro coaxed him into coming to hang out with his friends, which maybe means that his campaign to integrate Keith into his friend group is working. This is _not_ the conversation Shiro was hoping for, though.

“That's my boy,” Corinne says encouragingly. “Honestly, expecting failure going in is what’s going to save you.”

“I remember when I thought I was going to fall my first exams,” Mircea says. There's a touch of wistfulness in his voice, as if that's something worth being nostalgic about for any reason. “Turned out that Leathea wasn’t actually trying to kill us, she just wanted us to _think_ we were gonna die.”

“Speak for yourself, I actually failed that exam,” Matt says with a laugh. “Only reason I passed the class was because the midterm was an oral presentation and I aced that.”

Shiro looks on with horror. His relationship to Keith has been, up to this point, mostly Shiro instigating conversations, gym sessions, friend group hangouts, and pretty much anything else he can wrangle out of him. He would tentatively describe their relationship as friendly, and he tries to act sort of the way an older brother would—setting an example when needed, but not trying to parent. A decent role model of a good student is all Shiro wants to be, and most days it even seems like Keith respects him for that.

Now, though, these assholes he's called his friends for the last several years are hell-bent on destroying all the good work he's doing.

“I'm sure you'll do fine, Keith,” Shiro says coaxingly. “I'll help you study if you want.”

 _Study,_ Matt mouths with a roll of his eyes. Corinne snorts into her baked chicken, and Shiro jabs his elbow into her side as sneakily as he can manage. They're the worst.

“Uh, sure,” Keith says. “If you have time, I guess.”

Keith is silent for the rest of dinner. Shiro backs off a little more than usual since Keith actually _started a conversation_ today. Shiro’s acting like a proud parent over that, but it’s the first real sign of progress he’s had since he convinced Keith to hang out with Matt almost two months ago.

Shiro pulls Keith aside as they all troop out of the cafeteria. “Hey, I was serious earlier, do you wanna get together to study? I can help you with the stuff you don't understand since I took all those classes my first year too.”

Keith visibly struggles, gnawing at his bottom lip and shuffling on his feet. “You don’t—”

“ _And_ ,” Shiro interrupts before Keith can redirect this conversation, like he always does. “And I really think it would help me to go back and study the basics. Since I have my cumulative exams coming up this year, and everything.”

He sighs and crosses his arms at Shiro. “It’s a Friday night.”

“And you have exams in five days,” Shiro says. “So we should definitely get started right away.”

“I—”

“Wanna study at mine or yours?”

Keith eyes him suspiciously—it was a painstaking process to learn, but Shiro has gotten very good at reading his emotions, even when his face is mostly flat—and then it melts into a face of disgust. “Yours, definitely yours,” he says with clear revulsion. “Yesterday I found out where my roommate puts all of his used Q-tips.”

Shiro frowns, thrown. “You mean . . . the garbage?”

With a huff, Keith just says, “I wish.” He stares into space for a moment, looking vaguely traumatized. “I’ll go get my stuff.”

Shiro laughs uncomfortably at the look in his eyes, but he tells Keith to head over as soon as he’s ready.

Their relationship has grown significantly since the start of term. Keith no longer avoids him like he did the week after Shiro took him for burgers, nor does he make up excuses and flee when Shiro mentions Keith meeting and hanging out with Shiro’s other friends. They’re still working on getting him to speak not just when spoken to, but in general, his answers to questions have been getting longer and more animated. Shiro counts that as a win.

It’s tentative and slow going. Keith is flighty and nervous—Shiro hasn’t heard anything else explicit in terms of Keith being picked on, but he still hasn’t made friends in his own year. Shiro knows firsthand that being top of the scoreboards doesn’t exactly win people over instantly in such a competitive place.

Starting that day, they study together for finals every night, sometimes until three or four in the morning. Twice, Shiro passes out and Keith nudges him off the floor and redirects him to the bed before slipping out of Shiro’s room to sneak back to his own. Shiro loves it, though, because he’s finally getting Keith to hang out with him more regularly like he wanted, even if it’s under this guise of studying. It becomes clear quite quickly that Keith isn’t actually in any danger of failing his exams, but no matter how many times Shiro tries to tell him he’ll be fine, Keith brushes him off.

It only takes one day for Shiro to completely cede the use of his desk to Keith, but not without Matt pointing and laughing at him for clearing his own books off his own desk to make way.

He justifies it because Keith is majorly stressed. Shiro doesn’t realize it at first, since he’s never seen Keith express anything except blasé competence and mild irritation when it comes to school work, but the first time Keith snaps at Shiro for trying to get him to take a ten minute break changes his perspective.

Eventually, he negotiates Keith into stopping every hour, but only after citing three separate studies about the importance of physically moving your body after sitting hunched over in a chair for hours.

On the final night, Shiro looks at the clock. It’s nine in the evening. Matt is on the top bunk, earphones in and mashing furiously at his keyboard as he writes a letter to his little sister, and Keith is laser-focused on three separate books at Shiro’s desk. Shiro himself is sprawled diagonally across his own bed, head just hanging off the edge and PADD held up in the air so he can see his game of FreeCell. Personally, he can’t physically look at a school book or a study guide any longer without wanting to lay down and die, so he put himself on study rest for the remainder of the night in order to be fresh tomorrow morning.

Just then, Keith slams his fist down on the desk and reshuffles a sheaf of papers.

“Keith,” Shiro says, glancing over in concern. His PADD’s clock says Keith has been sitting in one spot for four hours without speaking a word. Keith’s shoulders tense up immediately when Shiro speaks, so he softens his voice. “Keith. I think you need to stop.”

“I can’t,” Keith bites out. “I still can’t do this stupid fucking—”

“Look, Keith, you and I both know that you actually _can_ ,” Shiro says as gently as possible. “But you’re wearing your brain out. You need to take a break, get your mind off of it, and rest before exams start tomorrow.”

“And I said I _can’t_ ,” Keith says, loud and sharp. “Look, you don’t understand, I need to—”

“Rest,” Shiro says, cutting him off. He drops his PADD on his pillow and starts to sit up. “You need to rest. You’ve been studying so hard, Keith. Even if you don’t think you know something, you do.”

“If you don’t want me here, I can go back to my room,” Keith snaps, slamming his book shut. He starts to get up, messily shoving his supplies back into his bag.

“That’s not what I meant!” Shiro says, but Keith is already hefting his bag over his shoulder. “Keith, wait, come on.”

“It’s fine. I’m getting out of your hair.”

This is not what he wanted at all, so when Keith takes his first step towards the door, Shiro springs to his feet in a flash and physically puts his body in Keith’s way to barricade him inside the room. Matt watches them with raised eyebrows. “Trust me. Please,” Shiro says, holding out one hand to placate him.

Keith glares at him. “I have to study. Let me—”

“Keith, I told you I’d help you study, and this is how I’m helping,” Shiro counters. “Come on, I’ve got an idea.”

So after about ten more minutes of back and forth that Matt might have filmed to send to his entire family, Shiro takes Keith to the gym. It’s not the first time they’ve worked out together, but tonight Shiro thinks Keith needs something a little more consuming than his usual spin at the punching bag or sprint on the treadmill, since Keith hadn’t stopped huffing angrily the whole way to the gym. Shiro has a plan, sort of.

“Hey, how much experience do you have in hand to hand combat?” Shiro asks as they’re stripping down in the locker room.

“I don’t know, some,” Keith says with a dismissive shrug. He throws his uniform pants onto the floor of his locker without bothering to fold them, following with his jacket.

Shiro holds back his frown. “Wanna spar with me?”

“Fine,” Keith says shortly. He tugs the waistband of his workout leggings up over his skinny hips. “Let’s go.”

Shiro follows him into the gym and over to the training mats. Silently, they segue into their warm-up stretches, familiar enough with the routine, and Shiro wraps his hands while he stretches out his hips and legs on the ground. He does his best to keep his attention on himself, not keen to rile Keith up more.

“You ready?” he asks Keith once he’s finished. He flexes his hands, examining the wraps critically.

“Let’s go,” Keith says. He springs to his feet, light on his toes and looking ready to take on half the Garrison, standing in the middle of the training mat with that look on his face. Shiro just hopes he made the right choice here about how to distract Keith .

“Aren’t you going to wrap your hands?” Shiro asks pointedly.

Keith just stares at him, doleful. Shiro shakes his head—even if Keith is determined to act stupid, Shiro is too smart to let him get away with it.

“Nope. Hold on, I’ve got an extra set in my gym bag. Be right back.” He ignores Keith’s aggravated groan and jogs back to the locker room to grab them, finding Keith looking annoyed upon his return.

“I don’t need this,” Keith insists.

“What, you want to risk breaking your hand?” Shiro says, raising an eyebrow as he tries to push the wraps into Keith’s hands. “Just do it, Keith.”

But Keith rolls his eyes. “I’m not gonna break anything.”

“That’s what I said too,” Shiro tells him dryly. “Humor me.”

So Keith takes the wraps from him with a scowl, hooking the loop around his thumb and wrapping it around his palm. Shiro snatches it out of his hands immediately. “How much hand to hand experience did you say you had?” he asks, skeptical.

“My experience in fighting is _fine_ ,” Keith says tightly. His body language tenses up even more and his shoulders start to climb up around his ears, arms crossed defensively.

Shiro blows out a breath, tells himself it’s not worth it to get angry when Keith is just trying to goad him on. He can be the patient one. “Okay,” he says, as gently as possible. “Let me show you how?”

With a heavy stare, Keith slowly untucks one hand from the crook of his arm and offers it to Shiro. Wordlessly, Shiro drops his gaze and takes Keith’s hand between his own. He keeps all extra thoughts firmly shut behind a heavy door in his brain.

“You have to wrap it around the back first so it doesn’t shift out of place while you fight,” Shiro explains, looping the fabric around Keith’s wrist.

He moves slowly so Keith can follow the pattern. Shiro’s heart skips as the pads of Keith’s fingers slide across the back of his knuckles. They’re more calloused than Shiro expected, and the soft scrape of skin inexplicably makes his breathing uneven as Shiro tries to get a hold of himself. He’s been doing so well trying to be Keith’s mentor, but it’s the quiet moments like this where they get too close and Shiro loses himself for a second, too focused on the sudden proximity of their bodies, that Shiro starts to lose sight of himself a little.

As Shiro tucks the last wrap into place, he makes the mistake of glancing up and finding Keith’s eyes fixed on him. His face is so close and his expression intense, studying Shiro almost as hard as he’s been staring at his books the last couple of days.

“Good?” Shiro asks. His voice comes out far more breathless than intended.

“Yeah,” Keith says lowly. Shiro swallows, tries to ignore how Keith looks this close with his eyes heavy-lidded in thought.

Shiro steels himself and takes a step back, dropping into a basic fighting stance. “Ready to go when you are.”

Mentally, he envisions how this fight is going to go—Keith probably doesn’t know much, might not be even a little bit formally trained, but Shiro has seen him work out. He carries a lot of strength hidden in the litheness of his body, and mentally he’s not even a little bit of a quitter.

Keith sizes him up for a moment, then jabs forward with a punch. Shiro easily knocks the hit away with the side of his forearm, and goes in for a swing of his own. He tries to telegraph the movement a little so Keith can block it in time, but it turns out it’s not needed in the least. In just the blink of an eye, Keith snatches him by the wrist, yanks Shiro forward to get him off balance, and does _something_ with his whole body that has Shiro flat on the floor before he can figure out what’s happening.

He blinks up at Keith owlishly, speechless.

“That was terrible,” Keith says. He sounds offended and plants his hands on his hips in a way that’s actually adorable, not that Shiro’s going to be telling him that, and stares down at Shiro with an angry gaze. “Look, if you’re not going to take this seriously, I’ll go back to the punching bags. Don’t waste my time.”

“I didn’t,” Shiro says weakly. Keith cocks an eyebrow down at him, and Shiro heaves himself up. “When you said you had _some_ hand to hand combat experience, I thought—”

“You thought that meant I didn’t know how to fight at all?”

Well. Yes, but Shiro isn’t going to admit that, either. Keith doesn’t look quite as mad now, just knowing and a little disappointed, as if he’s heard it before and should have known to expect it from Shiro as well. “I just meant that I thought you would have less experience. But now I know, so I’m not going to go easy on you.” He flashes Keith a smart grin, trying to salvage the situation.

“Yeah. Okay.” Keith bounces on his toes and sizes him up with a cutting look; there’s no good will in the lines of his face.

It goes slightly better after that, now that Shiro actually tries to put up a fight. Keith’s fighting style is quick and largely evasive; he puts his whole body into it and doesn’t hesitate for even a second when he sees an opening. He clearly knows what he’s doing and fights with a strangely fluid mix of a couple of different styles that Shiro only vaguely recognizes, and before long—well. Before long, Shiro’s fighting back with everything he’s got. He semi-regularly tutors cadets in the entry level combat classes at the request of the instructor, but it’s been a while since he had a sparring partner who could really keep up.

Actually, Shiro thinks as Keith somehow hooks a knee around his thigh and pulls him face first to the ground, it’s much more like Shiro is the one keeping up with Keith.

Shiro pants into the training mat, trying to keep his mouth off it. “I give,” he says, shocked and—maybe a little turned on. Keith’s grip tightens on Shiro’s wrists behind his back and pushes his arm up another inch, wrenching at Shiro’s shoulder. It’s unnecessary, making Shiro wince, but he doesn’t have enough leverage to push back and Keith is _strong._

“Get up,” Keith says, letting go and stalking to the other side of the training mat to ready his stance.

“Give me a second,” Shiro says, shocked. He heaves himself over so he’s lying flat on his back.

“Come _on_ ,” Keith says, voice wound tight. The tone makes Shiro uneasy, and almost as soon as he staggers to his feet, Keith is upon him, sweeping one leg at Shiro’s calves. Shiro stumbles back. He throws his arms up to block a punch, tries swinging one of his own but Keith is too fast.

Ducking under Shiro’s arm, Keith throws a jab at his ribs, lands it, and spins away before Shiro can do more than clip him on the shoulder with a wild swing. It’s so fast-paced that when Shiro finally gets the upper hand, his chest is heaving with the effort it takes to pin Keith. He scrambles to hold Keith’s wrists behind his back and keep him from twisting away.

“Give, Keith,” he gasps out. It just makes Keith buck even more wildly beneath him, so Shiro plants a knee on his lower back. Taking him down is exhilarating. “ _Give_.”

“Fuck you,” Keith snarls. His voice is so vicious that Shiro’s grip slackens in shock, and in the blink of an eye, Keith scrambles over and launches himself at Shiro. He drags them down to the floor and jams his forearm into Shiro’s throat.

Shiro chokes and shoves at Keith’s shoulders, but Keith has some sort of hidden strength because he just rolls with it and bears down even more. His teeth are bared in a snarl and his eyes are dark, looking down at Shiro like he doesn’t even know who’s underneath him. Gasping for air, Shiro tries to tap out, slapping at Keith’s shoulder, but there’s no give on the pressure on his throat.

Frantically, he pushes at Keith, not sure that the normal rules for sparring still apply right now. He tries to say Keith’s name, but there’s too much pressure on his neck and he can’t push the word out.

Suddenly, a clatter rings out across the room, like someone dropped a stack of weights. That finally seems to push Keith out of wherever his brain just went. He breaks away from Shiro, leaving him to gasp in air hungrily between coughs.

Keith falls to the side. “Fuck,” he whispers, so quiet that Shiro barely hears him. “Fuck, Shiro, are—are you okay? I’m sorry, I didn’t, I—”

“What the fuck, Keith?” Shiro rasps, head lolling to the side so he can look at Keith’s horrified face. Keith snaps his mouth shut and curls in on himself, and despite everything, that alone softens Shiro’s heart. He scrubs at his face. He needs a second. “Go get me some water.”

As Keith scrambles away, Shiro closes his eyes and just focuses on breathing. His head spins with the enormity of what just happened—he’s never seen Keith lose control like that, as if someone else was in charge of his body, someone made of rage and fury. The look in his eyes was indescribable. A little terrifying, absent and brutal. Shiro touches his throat with a wince; he can already feel the bruise forming, but surprisingly that’s the least of his concerns right now.

When Keith returns, Shiro pushes himself to sit up, leveraging one arm so the other can reach out for the water bottle.

“Thanks,” he rasps. The first sip of water feels like a balm.

“I—I can go,” Keith says nervously. His voice is so small.

Shiro sighs. “I’d really rather you stay,” he says honestly. After a hesitant moment, Keith settles down cross-legged on the training mat next to Shiro, avoiding his gaze completely by staring off to the side.

“I’m sorry,” he says again.

“Look, Keith. Tell me what happened.”

Keith’s hands clench and unclench in his lap, and he stares down at them like they hold the secrets to his behavior. “I just . . . .” Keith trails off and shakes his head a little. “I didn’t mean to.”

“I believe you,” Shiro says gently. He reaches out slowly and touches his fingertips to Keith’s knee until he looks up. “I’m angry, don’t get me wrong, but I can tell something is up. Just help me understand _why_ you’re upset. Is it finals?”

“Sort of,” Keith admits. “Look, I—you can’t tell anyone.”

Frowning, Shiro says, “Of course I won’t.”

“I’m basically on academic probation,” Keith says quickly, haltingly, like he can’t bear to say the words aloud. “As a condition of my acceptance here. I didn’t technically have high enough grades to get in, but since my entrance scores were so good, they cut me a deal so I can get into the fighter pilot program in two years.” He looks at Shiro nervously. “But now, if I don’t pull high enough grades . . . .”

Shiro swallows and tries to give Keith a reassuring smile, but his face isn’t cooperating. “Trust me, okay? Trust me when I say that you’re going to be fine. I’ve studied with you before, I know you know what you’re doing. You just need to slow down enough to get it done right.”

Ducking his head, Keith shifts to hunch over his knees, arms crossed on top of them. “I want to be here,” he says, rough and aching. He sounds like he might cry.

Shiro doesn’t quite know what to do—this is the sort of situation he might normally offer a hug, but Keith isn’t especially receptive to close contact on a good day and he doesn’t want to push anything that might tip Keith further into a meltdown. Obviously, the gym was a bad idea, but there are only so many places in the Garrison that two cadets can go to de-stress, especially when lights out is so soon and they have to get to bed early tonight.

There is one place, though, that Shiro normally keeps to himself, but . . . maybe Keith needs to know about it just as much as he did.

“This was a bad idea. Come with me.”

***

Keith glances around nervously as Shiro starts to jimmy the lock to the stairwell. “Where does this go?” he asks quietly, eyes flicking up to the big red EXIT sign above the door and then back to the hallway behind them, like someone is going to come all the way down here this late in the day.

“The only place in the Garrison where no one can find you,” Shiro says. The door opens easily, like the lock was always meant to be broken. “Provided they’re not looking too hard, that is.”

The stairwell is almost too dim to see well, but Shiro finds the railing easily and uses it to guide himself up to the top. Keith’s steps creep up slowly behind him.

“This is where I come when I really need a break,” Shiro says as he pushes open the door to the roof.

The night sky is clear and dark above them, the soft chill of the early winter air just nipping at his skin. Shiro takes a deep breath as he makes his way to his favorite corner, relishing the way the fresh desert air cleanses his lungs and cools his aching throat. The full moon is just under a week away and the moonlight washes over everything brightly. It nearly hides in its glow the strip of Milky Way that hangs above them on darker nights, but all the major stars and constellations are still visible. Shiro starts to mentally catalogue them as he settles down on the concrete, tracing his favorites and naming each star in their formations, imagining what it would be like to go to a place so far away that the stars become unrecognizable.

He took a lot of star charting classes his first year at the Garrison. It’s a hobby.

“How did you know this was here?” Keith asks quietly. He sits near Shiro, but keeps a swathe of space between them, like he’s afraid of what might happen if he sits too close.

“Someone showed it to me my first year here,” Shiro says. “I guess that means I’m passing the secret on to you.”

The silence sits between them for a while until Keith bursts out, “I’m sorry about earlier. I shouldn’t have lost control like that.”

“You’re right,” Shiro says, shifting so his body turns in toward Keith instead of the stars. “And Matt’s definitely going to give me shit for the bruise on my throat. But you can tell me things like this, Keith. That’s what wanting to be your friend is about, I want to know what you like, or when you’re upset.”

"But I don't need you to parent me," Keith says. Shiro tries to pretend he doesn't know what Keith means, but all it gets him is an eye roll. "If you want to be my friend, fine, but first you have to stop acting like my commanding officer or whatever."

"I'm not trying to," Shiro says.

"Yeah, you are," Keith drawls. "You're not the first person I've ever had in my life who tried to play that role, and it never worked out for any of them, so what makes you think it's gonna work out for you?"

Shiro eyes him carefully, but Keith doesn't seem upset. His words are harsh, but his tone is flat and resigned. "I just want to help."

"Yeah, well," Keith says. "It's not helping if you expect me to trust you but you never return the favor. I've been to therapy and I don't go anymore for a reason."

Mulling that piece of information over in his mind, Shiro asks, "So if I stop treating you like a subordinate, you'll stop letting your emotions pile up inside you until you're so mad you try to choke me out on the training mats?"

Keith ducks his head in embarrassment, scrubbing a hand over his hair. He has a ridiculous cowlick at the back of his head now that his hair has grown out a little bit from the no-nonsense crew cut he's had since Shiro's known him. "I can . . . work on it," he says.

"I guess I'll work on my thing, too." Shiro leans over, nudges Keith’s shoulder with his own. “You know what someone taught me once? That patience yields focus. It means—”

“If you’re patient, you’ll be focused,” Keith interrupts. Even at his most apologetic, he’s insolent. “I’ve heard you say it before.”

“Yeah, but it _also_ means that I know what it’s like to feel frustrated,” Shiro says. “I have trouble controlling my temper too, but I’ve been working on it. You have to be patient with yourself just as much as you’re patient with other people.”

Quiet settles over them again, but this time it isn’t strained. Shiro returns his attention to the stars—his throat still aches, but any ill will it left Shiro with is quickly disappearing as Keith opens up to him.

Keith shuffles into a more comfortable sitting position. “I like to spar.”

“Yeah?” Shiro grins at him and reaches out to punch Keith gently in the shoulder. “Me too. We’ll have to do it again sometime when we’re both a little calmer. It’s nice having a partner who can keep up.”

That finally gets Keith to smile, a tiny cracked thing. “You said you broke your hand once?” Keith asks, eyes landing on Shiro’s hands in his lap.

“Yeah, I fucked up my wrapping and broke my knuckle on Matt’s jaw,” Shiro says with a self-deprecating snort of laughter. He waves the offending pointer finger at Keith. “Worst part is I didn’t listen to the doctor when it was healing and now my finger is crooked forever.”

“I never noticed,” Keith says. He leans forward to get a closer look, and Shiro dutifully spreads the fingers of his right hand out so Keith can see the way one doesn’t quite sit on his hand the way it should.

“Matt will tell you that he broke my hand through the sheer force of how beautiful his jawline is,” Shiro says.

“Why were you even fighting him in the first place?”

Shiro snorts. “I convinced him to take a hand to hand combat class with me. He went for a week and a half, I broke my knuckle, and then he said he was gonna quit while he was ahead.”

Keith hums in response. “Smart.”

Hesitating, Shiro tries to figure out how to propose his question. Already tonight Keith has told him more about himself than everything else he’s collectively said about his life before the Garrison. The openness and trust is still so fragile, and he worries about breaking it. “So. I learned combat at the Garrison, obviously, but where in the _world_ did you learn how to fight like that?”

“Picked up a few things here and there,” Keith says vaguely.

“Right,” Shiro says, skeptical, “but I’ve been taking combat classes regularly since I was sixteen, and you’re coming into the Garrison as good as I am now. Better, maybe. That’s not exactly a few things.”

“When I was a kid, I had a foster sister for a while who was a black belt in karate,” he says, voice pitched low. “She found out I was getting—not picked on, but.” Keith shrugs in explanation, and Shiro holds his breath. “Thought I should know how to protect myself. After I left that home, I kept up with it. Watched videos, took some free classes when I could.”

Shiro turns his head to the side and traces the point of Keith’s nose up to his forehead with his eyes. He hesitates to push, but this is the most open Keith has ever been with him. “You’re really good. And I know for a fact that not all of those were karate moves.”

Snorting, Keith says, “No. Got a job at a gym when I was sixteen and spent the last two years learning as much as I could, since employees got to take classes for free.”

“Well,” Shiro says, “it paid off.”

Keith nods, the ghost of a smile twitching at the corner of his mouth.

***

On Friday, five days before the launch, Shiro and Matt receive their promotions from ensign to lieutenant. There’s been some bureaucratic nonsense going on for months about them getting sent into space with the appropriate rankings, but on a technicality they couldn’t be promoted so soon after becoming officers. Shiro suspects some rules and regulations have still been fudged, even though Iverson tells them that two-rank promotions are uncommon but not unheard of. Shiro can’t recall a single case of it happening in his seven years at the Garrison, but it’s really just for show—once the Kerberos mission is up in space, military rankings are hardly going to matter between the three crew members, and this is barely important in the grand scheme of things.

Keith is still staunchly pretending that he’s okay by making little jokes and prodding Shiro about remembering to pack up his belongings _before_ the night of the launch. And also blowjobs, actually—Keith has jumped him so many times in the last week that Shiro is starting to develop a Pavlovian response to Keith’s sidelong glances.

There’s just no time for that _right now_.

“Keith, stop that,” Shiro says, turning away from where Keith is leaning on the doorframe. He studies his own appearance in the bathroom mirror.

“Stop what?” Keith asks, even though he damn well knows what.

“Stop—no, stay back, I’ll never make it to the promotion ceremony if you start that.” Shiro is overruled as arms slip around his waist from behind.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Keith rumbles into the back of his neck. Shiro shivers.

“That’s the look you get when you want sex, and we don’t have time just because you’re horny.”

“It’s not my fault you’re hot when you’re all dressed up,” Keith says in protest, arms tightening around Shiro. “Just look at your _shoulders_.” His breath is warm and distracting on Shiro’s skin.

“And I don’t have time to take it all off and put it back on,” Shiro says firmly, even as a blush spreads across the bridge of his nose. To distract himself, he combs his fingers through the top of his hair—should he gel it back? Does he have _time_ to gel it back? A glance at the time reveals yes, but he needs to decide soon.

Keith rises up onto his toes and interrupts with a whisper in Shiro’s ear. “I don’t want you to take anything off.” Shiro swallows, mouth inexplicably dry. As a cadet still, Keith’s formal wear isn’t quite as ostentatious as Shiro’s dress uniform, but even with Keith mostly behind him, Shiro can’t help but admire the striking figure they cut together in the mirror. It’s almost enough to get him to say yes.

“After the ceremony,” Shiro promises. He straightens his collar. No gel, he decides, it’s not the best look on him.

“I’m holding you to that,” Keith says. He presses a dry kiss to the back of Shiro’s neck and then finally steps away, eyeing Shiro critically. “Did you shine your boots already?”

“Yeah, they’re out by the door,” Shiro says. He looks down at his socked feet and wiggles his toes. He shouldn’t be nervous about this—it’s really not a big deal, considering it’s more of a formality than anything else. But the fact that he’s getting a guaranteed promotion so early in his life like this doesn’t sit quite right in Shiro’s mind—he’s not completely unqualified, but he’s far from a point in his career where someone with his experience would normally even consider taking the lieutenant's exam.

Both he and Keith have developed a new tick now. His fingers toy with the ring lying at the end of the chain around his neck, and with a sigh, he tucks it back inside his collar.

“Do you ever think I’m a little under qualified to be piloting the first ship to Pluto?” Shiro asks, voice loud so Keith can hear him out in the bedroom.

There are plenty of other pilots with more experience than him—Commander Kawashima, for example, has successfully piloted two separate missions, one to Mercury and one to Jupiter's moon Callisto. She's a legend, her credentials even more intimidating than her strict classrooms. Shiro was lucky in getting to take a five week long intensive simulations course with her over the summer before his final year at the Garrison—her classes book up faster than any others. Her name had to have been in the pool next to his, and Shiro can't imagine how in the world they could even look at the two side by side and still pick _him_.

“You're doing that thing again,” Keith says quietly reappearing at the door.

“What thing?” Shiro asks. It's sort of a rhetorical question, but Keith answers him anyway.

“That anxiety thing you think I don't know about.” Keith steps forward again and tugs Shiro around. “You're not the most qualified pilot at the Garrison, but you're qualified for this mission. They wouldn't have picked you if you weren't.”

Shiro sighs and tries to knock that into his brain. Sometimes, even empirical knowledge is hard to trust when your brain keeps insisting there must be a mistake, but empirical knowledge also tells him that Keith wouldn’t lie to him about this, not even to make him feel better.

“Come on, let’s get going. I have plans for you after,” Keith says, nudging him toward the door. Shiro starts lacing up his boots.

“I don’t think us blowing each other counts as _plans_ ,” Shiro says. He still feels unsteady, but at least half of it can be chalked up to how close the launch is.

“That was just an extra offer to take the edge off your nerves,” Keith says. “I have actual plans.”

“Do you,” Shiro says. He stands and spreads his arms for Keith to inspect his uniform—he can’t have even one thread out of place.

Keith smiles softly at him. “You look great. Very official.”

“And my hair, it’s not—”

“ _Shiro_. I already said it, you look great.” Keith pats him on the shoulder and then kneels down to lace up his own boots.

Shiro sighs. “Sorry. I don’t know why I’m so nervous. All the graduating cadets are getting promoted at this, too, it’s not like all the focus is going to be on me and Matt.”

Shrugging a little, Keith glances up and says, “You wouldn’t be nervous if you had let me blow you.”

He pouts at Keith. “If you had offered earlier—”

“We have half an hour before it starts and it only takes ten minutes to get there,” Keith says dryly. “If you think I can’t get you off in twenty minutes, then I don’t know what you think was going on last night.”

“Well—” Shiro says, but he can’t actually come up with a legitimate sounding argument against that. “Well, now I’m ready to leave, so.”

Keith stands and looks up at Shiro consideringly. Shiro gets a little lost staring into his eyes, and he startles when Keith’s hands come up to bracket his face, touch light and gentle. He smiles so softly, and it abruptly reminds Shiro of the young cadet who used to scowl unhappily every time they laid eyes on each other.

“Hey,” Keith says quietly. “I promise you’ll be fine. And after we sit through two hours of Iverson making overstatements about the importance of discipline, I have a surprise for you. A good one.”

Shiro makes the conscious decision not to argue. He dips his head to catch the heel of Keith’s palm with a kiss and murmurs against it, “Okay. Okay.”

Keith kisses him on the mouth, achingly sweet, and then he stretches up on his toes and uses his fingers to tilt Shiro’s head downward just slightly, enough so he can kiss his forehead. “I’m glad you’re my husband,” he whispers. “We made a good choice on that one.”

“You were always my best choice,” Shiro says, and he kisses Keith into silence.

***

In stark contrast to all of the anxious build-up, Shiro finds the ceremony even more boring this time than he did during his first promotion to officer two years ago. Somehow, Iverson manages to make a speech about congratulations, growth, and learning into a reprimand. At one point, Shiro searches out Keith in the crowd, sitting with the other cadets, and finds him staring straight up at the ceiling in boredom. If Shiro wasn’t seated on the risers behind Iverson and, therefore, where every single person in the crowd can see, he would do the same.

Shiro and Matt sit in their assigned positions with three other people receiving promotions to lieutenant. The two of them are the youngest by far. The ceremony works its way up from the lowest ranks, putting Shiro in the third group of people to stand. Iverson pins a stand-in medal on his chest when it’s Shiro’s turn—the real uniform upgrade will actually come in the mail after Shiro is already in space. Keith has already teasingly promised to get it broken in for him.

With his part over, Shiro zones out for the rest of the ceremony. By the time he finds Keith in the crowd afterwards, he’s completely forgotten everything Iverson said.

“I just want to take this damn uniform off,” Shiro grumbles as they make their way through the groups of people milling about.

“Wearing this isn’t the highlight of your year?” Keith asks dryly.

“Somehow, no.”

Keith just smirks back at Shiro as he leads them away from the crowds. The ceremony is well attended, but almost only by family members of recent graduates or the handful of older officers who have family in the area already. Privately, Shiro thinks that once you’ve seen one promotion ceremony, you’ve seen them all, because there’s not much deviation from the structure.

“Do I get to know where we’re going yet?” Shiro asks.

“You should be smart enough to figure it out already,” Keith says. “I could only get so creative.”

“Maybe I’m not paying attention to where we’re going because I just like watching you walk in front of me,” Shiro says. It’s mostly a joke, but also he hasn’t noticed which turns they’re taking because he likes the way Keith’s waist and hips look in the tailored lines of his dress uniform.

Keith stops short, and it’s a near thing that Shiro doesn’t run into him. “Do your thing.”

Shiro looks up. They’re at the back of a dim hallway, standing in front of a familiar, battered fire door. “You’re going to need to learn how to open this yourself if you want to keep coming up here while I’m gone,” he says, flashing Keith a grin.

“I know how to open it,” Keith says, rolling his eyes. “You’re faster at it.”

“Baby, I’m _always_ faster at everything,” Shiro says as he jimmies the lock open. It pops open with barely a touch—his specialty.

“Everything?” Keith raises a brow.

“Yeah. Everything.”

“Hm,” Keith says. He pulls the door open and takes the first step into the stairwell. “Self-burn.”

Shiro stops short and stares at Keith’s retreating back as it hits him. “ _Keith_ ,” he says, half laughing and half incredulous.

“What?” Keith says. He pauses halfway up the staircase, half turned back toward Shiro with a hand on the railing.

“I regret the day I ever introduced you to Matt Holt,” Shiro says with a shake of his head.

“You started it, not me,” Keith says, and, oh, it is _on_. Shiro chases him the rest of the way up the stairs and flattens Keith against the door leading outside to the roof. Keith yelps when Shiro’s hand finds that ticklish spot he has just on the one side of his ribs.

“Stop!” Keith squawks, too loud to be stealthy when they’re technically not supposed to be up here. “ _Shiro_.”

“Yes, dear husband?” He nuzzles his nose into the back of Keith’s neck and stills his hand, leaving it placed over that sensitive spot just in case.

“Don’t call me that,” Keith says automatically. He sounds pleased.

“Try and stop me,” Shiro says, and he takes the elbow Keith throws into his side gracefully.

Shiro follows Keith along the edge of the roof to the most secluded corner. There’s a blanket spread out on the concrete next to a bottle of wine and what looks like a plate of fruit and chocolates, all sitting underneath Keith’s telescope. Shiro’s heart thumps ridiculously in his chest and he tangles his fingers together with Keith’s in silent gratitude.

“This is a little fancy for us, don’t you think?” Shiro teases him warmly as they settle on the ground, leaning against the low wall that runs around the perimeter of the roof.

Keith sighs. “I told Mircea to get Oreos, but he didn’t think it was romantic enough.”

Shiro contemplates that for a moment. “Well, that clears that up, then. Our friends definitely know we’re together.” Shrugging, Keith twists the cap off the bottle and hands it over to Shiro. “Before I drink this, I need to know if you have any romantic confessions you want to make like the last time you took me out to see the stars.”

“What are you going to do if I do?” Keith asks warily.

“Probably film it so I can watch it in space.” Shiro flashes him a grin.

“Not going to happen,” Keith says firmly, but Shiro can just trace the color of embarrassment dusting the tops of his cheeks. “I just thought it would be nice to—you know, one more time.”

Shiro takes a swig of wine and winks at Keith. “You wanna _you know_ one more time?”

“You’re never going to get laid again if you keep that up,” Keith says, turning to the plate of food next to him.

Grinning, Shiro lapses into a comfortable silence as he watches Keith pluck a grape off the bunch and pop it into his mouth. He holds the next one up for Shiro, and Keith keeps his gaze the whole way, the soft, somewhat longing look there giving way to a kindling fire as Shiro’s lips brush deliberately over the tips of his fingers.

Transfixed, Keith holds a piece of chocolate to Shiro’s lips. Shiro takes it slowly, relishing the way the pads of Keith’s fingers rest just so on his bottom lip as he studies Shiro with an intense look. He bites down, and caramel explodes on his tongue.

“I brought you up here to stargaze,” Keith says, low, as if he’s trying to convince himself of that more than anything. “I’m told it’s romantic.”

“You know what else is romantic?” Shiro asks. He dips his head down so Keith’s fingers lay on the seam of his lips. “Letting your husband eat chocolate off you _underneath_ the stars.” He looks at Keith from under his eyelashes. “That’s romantic.”

Under his breath, Keith says, “Fuck.”

Shiro reaches over Keith to grab what looks like a chocolate covered strawberry. Keith nibbles on the end when he holds it to his mouth.

Every moment is bittersweet, every brush of Keith’s mouth at the tips of his fingers a reminder of the time ticking down. Desperate, Shiro pulls Keith into his lap and tugs him in for a kiss. He wants to have every last bit of Keith that he can before their time runs out, and it’s that desperation that makes him slow down.

More than anything, Shiro thinks as he licks into Keith’s mouth, than anything in the world, he wants to savor this, wants to burn this night into his mind forever. The new medal on his chest won’t weigh him down—he feels young, wild, free, and reckless enough to be gripping his husband’s hair in one hand and sliding the other up under the back of his clothes in full view of anyone who climbed up to this rooftop.

“I want to touch you,” Shiro whispers when they pull apart so Keith can pull in a gasp of air. “Let me—”

“Yeah, yes,” Keith pants. His fingers yank clumsily at the fastenings of his dress jacket, mouth slow and dirty on Shiro’s. He isn’t wearing the undershirt that’s supposed to go with the uniform, and Shiro gets an affectionate scoff when he points that out. “Knew I wasn’t going to be wearing it for that long,” he offers as an excuse.

“You planned this pretty well,” Shiro says, trailing a hand down the center of Keith’s chest. Keith just raises his eyebrow and shrugs out of his jacket, throwing it on the ground beside them.

“Told you” Keith plucks another chocolate from the plate and bites it in half, feeding the rest to Shiro. It’s a truffle, maybe. Shiro doesn’t know much about fancy chocolates except to know that it _is_ fancy and every sweet taste of it is better on Keith’s tongue.

Shiro bites the next one in half, and caramel drips down his thumb. He barely has time to notice before Keith’s mouth descends on his skin, licking a sticky trail up the side of his hand. The chocolate held between Shiro’s fingers disappears into Keith’s mouth, and Shiro laughs delightedly, tapping his newly freed fingers under Keith’s chin until he looks Shiro in the eyes.

“Good?” he asks, and Keith nods, a smirk twisting at his lips. Clearly, the only thing to do is kiss him, so Shiro does, letting his sticky fingers scratch through the soft hair at the base of Keith’s neck.

“Hmm, I love you,” Shiro says into Keith’s mouth. He tastes like chocolate and caramel, and the words just make Keith kiss him deeper.

Keith tears himself away just for long enough to mutter, “Love me by getting naked.” Shiro chokes on his laughter.

“You say the sweetest things,” he says, pecking Keith on the lips. It is quite literally impossible for Shiro to keep his hands off Keith.

They pull off their uniforms quickly and come back together. It’s late enough in the year now that the night air is still warm from the day’s sun, and Keith climbing back on top of him sets Shiro’s skin on fire. They kiss and they kiss and Shiro almost forgets about the fact that they’re naked—he’s so absorbed in Keith pressed all around him that Shiro’s cock feels secondary. He wants to keep stroking his hands up and down the long line of Keith’s spine and mapping out the shifting muscles in his shoulders. It’s the simple touches and the softest movements that make him feel overwhelmed and lit up from the inside.

Crying right now would be embarrassing, Shiro tells himself firmly, but he can’t help the burning in the back of his throat.

Keith sighs prettily as he slides his mouth from Shiro’s mouth to his jaw, to the sensitive place where his jaw meets his neck, planting wet, teasing kisses up to his ear. His hips rock gently into Shiro’s body, long legs sprawled out on either side of Shiro’s, and Shiro grips one of those strong thighs just to get something to hold onto when Keith nips at the side of his neck.

“Let me ride you,” Keith whispers breathlessly, his breath brushing against the shell of Shiro’s ear. Shiro groans under the weight of the image: Keith above him, outlined by nothing but the stars and the waning half-moon in the night sky. His desire is soft and possessive.

“We don’t have—” Shiro starts to say, but Keith silences him with a deep kiss.

“You think I brought you up here without bringing lube, too?” Keith presses the bottle into his hand, fished out of the pocket of his pants. “Open me up, Takashi, I’ve been thinking about your fingers all damn _day_.” Keith grinds his hips against Shiro’s cock insistently, making Shiro gasp against his cheek.

Shiro fumbles open the lube behind Keith’s back. His mouth drops open in a soft moan as Keith gives up on his mouth and descends to his neck again, licking down the column of his throat to suck softly at the jut of his collarbone. When Keith nips at the skin below, Shiro drops the bottle.

“Sorry,” Shiro says, patting the ground next to his thigh, searching for it

“You’re a mess,” Keith says affectionately, pulling back slightly so he can snatch the bottle off the ground and open it himself. “Hand.” Shiro obediently holds out his hand, lets Keith slather lube on his fingers, and then Keith is grabbing his wrist impetuously to guide Shiro right where he wants him. Shiro grabs Keith’s ass with his free hand, fingers gripping tightly as he circles one wet finger around Keith’s hole.

“Hurry up,” Keith complains, pushing himself back against Shiro, but Shiro pulls away. He kisses Keith instead, using every trick he knows to render Keith needy and compliant against him.

“Let’s go slow tonight, okay?” Shiro whispers. Keith nods, eyes glinting on his shadowed face.

Shiro presses one finger in so slowly as he nudges Keith’s face up so he can seal their mouths together. He licks at Keith’s bottom lip, teasing and soft, and Keith’s arms come up to balance on his shoulders. Shiro loses himself completely in Keith and his body, his low hitched moan when Shiro works his way up to pressing three fingers inside of him and mouths at the side of his neck.

Keith sighs into his ear, and the tickle of his breath sends shivers down Shiro’s spine. “Kiss me again,” he says, so Shiro does.

They’ve done this countless times, but now feels just as exciting as the first time. Keith’s lips are soft and sweet, just like the way his body opens up for Shiro’s fingers, _every single time_ Shiro is blessed enough to hold him in his arms.

Shiro is going to miss him like it _burns_ from the very moment he steps on that spaceship.

The kiss breaks when Keith plants a hand in the middle of Shiro’s chest and pushes him away. “I’m ready,” he says, breathless and lips swollen.

“Yeah?” Shiro asks. He moves his fingers gently inside Keith a few more times, unable to quite give up the feeling, and Keith tips his head back with a moan.

“Fuck, that’s good,” he says to the sky.

Shiro fumbles with the lube again because he’s ridiculous, but Keith just licks his lips and watches him expectantly, waiting for Shiro’s nod. He holds Shiro’s gaze as he works himself down onto Shiro's cock, mouth dropping silently open as if in shock. Shiro wants to worship his bottom lip, reverent and faithful. A low moan slips from Keith’s mouth, and it’s enough to make Shiro’s cock twitch inside Keith.

“You feel—” Keith says. He shakes his head to knock some of the fog out of his eyes. “Fuck, Shiro, amazing.”

“Yeah?” Shiro's hands stroke down Keith's chest to land at his hips, grip going bruising tight when Keith wiggles his hips to get settled. He gets a devious grin and then Keith rocks forward to bite at the junction of Shiro's neck and shoulder playfully. “You promised me slow and sweet.”

“I don’t—ah—remember anything about sweet,” Keith says, rolling his hips down to meet Shiro's.

Shiro drags him into a kiss, slow, but not sweet by any means, and when he pulls back, Keith looks dazed and his nails are digging into Shiro's skin where his hand rests on his chest. “Please, baby?” Shiro whispers. “For me?”

Keith hedges, “Maybe,” and he feels his way down Shiro's chest.

“Be good for me, baby, like I know you can.” Shiro kisses him once more, and it's then, finally, that Keith melts against him.

“Only 'cause you asked so nice,” Keith says, and he's off.

They move together like perfectly matched gears, fluid and easy. Shiro uses his hands to guide Keith gently, and Keith grinds his hips down at the base of every stroke, as if he can get Shiro deeper inside that way. Keith wraps both of his arms around Shiro's neck and leans their foreheads together so he can pant into Shiro's mouth, their lips just brushing every now and then like the best tease.

Keith’s fingertips tap at Shiro’s bottom lip. Shiro opens his mouth and the taste of chocolate floods his tongue; he moans, licking at Keith’s fingers and drawing them deeper into his mouth so he can suck the rest of the taste off them.

“Oh, _fuck_ ,” Keith whispers, entranced by the sight. His eyes burn into Shiro, who pulls back so he can fully appreciate the way Keith looks right now.

He was right earlier when he thought about what it would be like for half of his field of vision to be Keith and the other half to be the wide-open sky. It's a brilliantly clear night, so much so that Shiro can see the band of the Milky Way stretched above them, unobscured even by the faded light of the moon sitting low over the horizon. Keith's hair blends into the night sky, black and brilliant as space. It's a near thing, but just to have him like this is a better feeling than the hot clench around Shiro's cock. The way Keith rocks his hips is slow and perfect, welcoming Shiro inside.

Keith's breath stutters out. “Fuck, I'm close already,” he admits with a sigh and a moan.

Shiro's hand slips down to his cock with a smile, fingertips just teasing gently up and down the length the way Keith likes sometimes. It gets him a hitched noise and a thrown back head, baring the smooth skin of Keith's throat for the taking.

“So good for me, baby,” Shiro mutters into Keith's neck, mouthing over the place where his veins run hot just beneath the skin. “Always so good, I love you.”

Heat builds in the pit of Shiro’s stomach as Keith’s pretty moans spill out of his mouth uncontrollably while Shiro strokes his cock. He hardly registers Keith spilling into his hand because he’s so distracted by the tight heat building in his body, in the heat of Keith around him, too busy sucking at the soft underside of Keith’s jaw to realize. Keith shudders in his arms, voice snapping to silence as his hips shake and try to grind down and push Shiro deeper inside. Shiro can’t even see his face but he knows his expression is beautiful, just like every part of him.

Shiro comes to Keith whispering in his ear, “ _Takashi_.” As new stars explode behind his eyelids, he thinks the world has never known a love like the riot of feeling in his heart.

***

Normally, most cadets go home for a week or two after finals are completed, before the start of summer seminars and internships. This year, the launch of the Kerberos mission is keeping the majority of the student population on base in anticipation of getting to actually _see_ the launch. The unfortunate side effect is that Shiro has been mobbed by overly excited second-years about four times too many just by Monday afternoon. He’s taken to formulating convoluted, out-of-the-way routes if he wants to go somewhere, and it’s honestly a pain in the ass.

“Sounds like you’ve got a lot of admirers,” Keith says, rolling out a line of packing tape over the top of a cardboard box. Graciously, he’s helping Shiro pack up his things—there isn’t a lot, mostly just clothes, but he can’t take all of it into space. It will sit in the Garrison storage facility until he comes back.

“Jealous?” Shiro asks, wiggling his eyebrows.

Keith casts him an unimpressed glance. “No. I already beat them all.”

Shiro collapses into laughter, falling back to sit on the edge of the bed. “I didn’t realize it was a competition,” he says.

“Of course you didn’t,” Keith says, picking up the box to carry it to the others stacked by the door. Shiro admires the way his biceps look under the strain of holding it—the definition comes out, and it makes Shiro feel like a dreamy high schooler. “Anything else to pack?”

“Everything else is going with me or stuff I need,” Shiro says, glancing one last time around his room. “Besides, we’ve got a bus to catch, so we should go.”

Shiro’s family flies in today. The Garrison is courteously putting them up for a few days in the rooms usually reserved for visiting officers or scientists until their flight back to Chicago on Thursday. Today is official pictures and family night; tomorrow is the final press conference and a formal banquet so the Garrison can parade the flight crew around with family; Wednesday Shiro will get a few hours with everyone in the morning before final day-of preparations start and he has to be at the launch site.

Every time he remembers how little time there is left, his stomach clenches up with anxiety and excitement.

The ship will launch out of a scientific research facility even more remotely located than the Garrison itself, and Shiro gets to meet his family there, helpfully flown in from the airport in Phoenix. To get there, Shiro piles into a bus with Keith and the Holts because they live so close to base. Normally with Matt and Colleen around, the air would be jovial and over the top, but today everyone is subdued.

Shiro finds himself thankful for that—it gives him time to pull Keith all the way into his side on their shared bench seat and press his nose into Keith's hair, committing the scent to memory. Keith clasps Shiro's hand between both of his own, grasp too tight to be entirely casual, and it leaves Shiro feeling more grounded than anything else has. They don't say anything the whole way, even though the bus takes forty five minutes to get to the launch site. It’s better now to just bask in each other because there isn't much left to say that won't come out without tears and gut-wrenching sobs. Shiro considers himself intimately familiar with the feeling now.

The ship rises out of the desert like a proud beacon, the gleaming titanium casing shining like a beacon in the desert sun. It doesn’t look like the sort of thing that should be taking them into space and all the way to Pluto, too small, delicate, and thin-skinned, but Shiro has flown so many simulations and seen the computer-generated models too many times to have any actual doubts about its capability. The _Defiant I_  is top of the line by any standard of measurement.

His aunts kiss them both on the cheeks, their hands warm and steadying on Shiro's shoulders. He tries to keep it in, but when his cousin Ruhi reaches all the way up to ruffle his hair and scold him for having a wedding on such short notice that she couldn't make it, the first tear rolls down his cheek.

“No, baby,” Tomoko says, wrapping him back up in her arms. He sniffs wetly and shakes his head, trying to bite out the words, _I'm fine_ , but they refuse to come.

The group hug isn't entirely unexpected, but Keith starting it is.

“I'm just going to miss all of you a lot,” Shiro says once he gets his vocal cords in order. “It's gonna be a long trip.”

From the outside layer of the hug, Ryou crushes in further against Keith and Zareena. Shiro struggles to breathe a little but being surrounded by love like this sets his heart ablaze with joy. He'll miss them because he loves his family more than he knows how to describe—a little cobbled together, a little unorthodox, and no amount of billions of miles between him and them is going to change that.

“Hey, Holts!” Tomoko yells out. “Get in on this.”

So another layer gets added to the huddle, and Shiro loses track of how long they actually stand like that.

***

Shiro’s family gathers around him eagerly as he starts to explain the ship. Not even Keith has been out here before, and there’s a touch of pride in the set of his shoulders and the way he carries himself as he watches Shiro give them a short tour. There are a lot of scientists and personnel scrambling around, so Shiro tries to keep it subtle, but he doesn’t even notice half the time when his hand falls from Keith’s shoulder to the small of his back and sticks there like that’s where it belongs.

“No one will be down here Wednesday because it’s within the exhaust range,” Shiro says as he detangles himself from Keith again. Keith is absolutely not helping with the way he keeps inserting his body into Shiro’s space.

“Please tell me we get to see inside the ship,” Ryou says, craning his neck all the way to back to stare up at it.

Shiro shrugs. “I don’t see why not—probably after the pictures?”

“ _Sweet_.”

The pictures are their own special kind of hell. The hot June sun beats down on Shiro’s neck and shoulders like it wants to boil him alive, and he’s fairly certain he’s sweating through his uniform jacket in addition to the undershirt. Even the breeze isn’t enough to make up for it. Wind blows around feeling just as warm as the air, and it’s so dry and rough that Shiro would swear he feels static electricity building up in his fingertips.

“I want to sit in the pilot’s seat,” Keith says. His hand lands on Shiro’s elbow and his chest presses up against his arm, and Shiro can’t bring himself to deny him.

“Getting ready for your future assignment?” Shiro teases.

“You know I am.” Keith's answer is easy, and the smirk he flashes Shiro is mind numbing. “We're going places.”

“I—” Shiro starts to say, but the photographer makes angry hand gestures at the two of them. He forgot they're supposed to be posing like respectable members of the Garrison. “Shit.” Shiro falls comfortably into parade rest and feels Keith sigh and do the same next to him. Shiro's family and the Holts watch from over the photographer's shoulder, awaiting the moment the next person is called up to stand with Shiro so they can get official shots for the press and extra ones as mementos for the family.

“Can we get a real one?” Tomoko calls out, frowning at the way they're standing with a respectable four inches of space between them and bland smiles on their faces. Shiro trades glances with Keith.

He throws an arm around Keith's shoulder and pulls him in. Keith smiles up at him, eyes glittering with mischief, and it's all Shiro can do to not swoop down and capture Keith's mouth in his own. The photographer looks weary already, but mostly like they’re not getting paid enough to deal with all of this on such a hot day, and dutifully snaps away.

“For the love of— _like you love each other_!” Tomoko shouts, throwing her hands up in the air. “What is this, are you saving yourselves for after the mission?” Zareena smacks her lightly on the shoulder, but she’s grinning like a hyena.

“We’re not—” Shiro starts to say as a blush crawls over his cheeks, but Keith digs his fingers into Shiro’s side to shut him up.

“C'mon, what good is any of this if you don't try and piss Iverson off one more time?” Keith says. “I need a picture of us for the frame your aunts gave me.”

“They gave you a what?” Shiro asks, but Keith waves him off.

They shuffle together until they’re standing in a position that reminds Shiro of high school prom photos, his arm around Keith’s waist and Keith’s hand on his chest, turned in so they’re pressed almost completely together. It feels like the sort of pose a married couple would take, and Shiro can’t help but preen underneath that thought a little bit. They _are_ a married couple.

Keith sneaks a kiss on Shiro’s cheek before he hands Shiro over to his cousins. It makes Shiro nervous to watch him whispering conspiratorially with his aunts, and for the first time he takes solace in knowing that he won’t even be on this planet anymore in a few days, and there’s nothing anyone can do to interfere in his life before then.

Shiro takes pictures with every person there, and in groups, and smaller groups, and then in different groups—there are too many pictures, really, even for Shiro’s admittedly sentimental tastes. Eventually, though, the photographer releases them.

Now that the dam has been breached, Shiro can’t quite seem to keep his hands off Keith. He keeps a hand at his lower back as he leads his family up to the platform surrounding the ship, pointing out all the most important parts and explaining how they work. Shiro knows that his family has always been proud of him for his work at the Garrison, but this is the first time he can show them something tangible and real to exemplify everything he’s done while here. It’s not just commendations or disembodied scores from sim runs—Shiro is going to fly this ship right here all the way to Pluto.

“Wait, do your legs even fit in here?” Ryou asks when they make their way inside the cockpit. He lifts himself into the seat with a loud grunt and struggles to rearrange himself.

“It’s tight,” Shiro says. Ryou’s knees bump up against the lip of the controls, but admittedly, he’s three inches taller than Shiro and all leg.

“Explain to me again why the seats are on the wall,” Tomoko says as she cranes her neck around the tiny cockpit.

Shiro shrugs a little. “The direction of up and down is relative—once we get to space, what looks like the wall now will be the floor, and the window above us now will be pointing toward Kerberos.”

“Amazing.”

It really is amazing, Shiro reflects as his family slowly makes their way out of the cockpit and back outside. It leaves him and Keith alone, but he doesn’t quite want to follow them outside yet. He examines the pilot’s controls absently and imagines what the window sitting above him right now will look like once they’re out there. The vast emptiness of space has always been enthralling to Shiro, but the closer he gets to going there, the more his brain wants to remind him how very alone and far away from home their tiny spaceship will be be. Anything can happen out there, but that’s not necessarily a good thing.

“You’re still anxious,” Keith says, blunt but forgiving as soon as Shiro’s family is out of earshot. “But, you know, you don’t need to be. You’ve got this.”

Shiro blows out a breath, stares up through the reinforced glass of the ship’s window. It’s not necessary, really, to have the front of the ship be see-through, considering that none of the piloting actually requires him to be able to see anything. There are sensors and machines to target the landing and cameras to help him see the bottom of the ship when they touch down. The actual navigation once they clear Earth’s atmosphere is almost completely automatic, only requiring them to note course corrections and double check their trajectory as a failsafe measure. Piloting a spaceship on a real exploratory mission, it turns out, doesn’t involve much piloting at all.

“I don’t know,” Shiro says, mostly just to cut the silence. “There’s just . . . so much that can go wrong.” Wednesday is just the first step, and no matter how many hours of work from countess scientists have gone into this ship, Shiro still has the image burned into his brain of the _Ascension_ mission seven years ago failing to launch and exploding without ever leaving the ground. These things, they happen—far more regularly than anyone would like to admit.

“Yeah,” Keith acknowledges. He isn’t a fool; he’s on the same career path as Shiro and definitely knows all the risks. “But this is what we signed up for. You can’t have space exploration without any of the danger.”

Shiro mulls that over for a moment. “I wish I knew how to describe this—this feeling that I get when I think about the mission.” Nothing should be indescribable. “I don’t understand why I feel it.”

It isn’t quite foreboding because that’s too simple. It’s not fear, because he’s not scared after all of the training he went through, and it’s not entirely uneasiness either. The dark blankness of space calls to him in a way he’s never known before, but there’s something just as insistent inside his throat begging him to stay.

“I know you, Shiro,” Keith says, so quietly that Shiro almost misses it. “I know you.”

Inexplicably, that’s what gets to Shiro, makes his throat tighten up and his eyes run hot with unshed tears. Keith slips into his arms and wraps him in a giant hug that Shiro returns with equal fervor, the thick taste of emotion resting heavy on his tongue.

“Promise me you’ll be here,” Shiro says, suddenly desperate. “Promise me you’ll find me after this and be with me still.”

“Fuck you,” Keith breathes. “Fuck you, of course I will.”

He kisses Shiro with a soul-deep love, hard and devouring, like he’s trying to give a piece of himself and take part of Shiro. Messily, Shiro returns it, his restless fingers touching Keith’s hair, cheekbones, shoulders, waist, trying to memorize everything before it disappears from him. No matter how much he tries to tell himself this isn’t the end, it still feels like an ending, like an irrevocable complication.

In two days, Shiro ships out, and he would still throw it all away if Keith just whispered those words against his lips again.

When the kiss breaks, Shiro is crying, shameless and quiet. Keith doesn’t say anything, just thumbs away the tears before they can drip past Shiro’s cheekbones and kisses him countless more times on the lips. Shiro wants to drown in his touch.

He holds Keith to him until he can think again, and then finally he sniffs loudly and says, “We should probably go.”

“Yeah,” Keith says. He lands another kiss, hot and slow. “Who knows what they think we’re up to.”

Laughing, Shiro pulls Keith out of the cockpit and down the cramped little hallway to the docking station. The door opens easily at his touch, and they descend down the stairs to the desert with their hands clasped together. When they reach it, Keith takes his free hand and pulls them both to his lips, laying a kiss on each knuckle, and unintentionally destroying Shiro’s life.

“Keith,” he starts, intent on getting Keith to understand his state of mind, but the most terrible person Shiro has ever known chooses that exact moment to interrupt him.

“What the _fuck_ , Katie,” Matt shrieks, clear across the yard. “No one wants to hear about your vegetable penis, okay?” Keith’s eyes get all big and wide, staring up at Shiro, and the moment is broken as they collapse into laughter together.

***

The day of the launch is utterly surreal.

The alarm goes off at an ungodly hour and Keith slaps at it on the nightstand with a heartfelt groan. Shiro blinks up at the ceiling. This is already one of those unfortunate mornings where he can’t doze for another ten or fifteen minutes before hauling himself out of bed because his body has catapulted into full alertness. His gut thrums with nervous energy.

Keith rolls over and his gaze burns into the side of Shiro’s head. “Hey.”

“Morning, baby,” Shiro says. Keith is not a morning person, much less a 5:30 a.m. person, but today is a special case.

Actually, when he pays closer attention, Keith looks like shit. The bags under his eyes are more pronounced than Shiro has ever seen them, and the whites of his eyes are bloodshot. Exhaustion is written clearly all over his face.

“Didn’t sleep?” Shiro asks in concern. Gently, he reaches out and rubs a thumb over Keith’s cheek.

“Not really,” Keith mumbles. His eyes flutter closed. “’S hard to.”

“I should be the one who’s anxious and up all night,” Shiro says. His hand trails down to Keith’s neck, pads of his fingers rubbing up against the gentle scrape of stubble just underneath his chin.

“Didn’t want to stop looking at you.” Keith is always more honest when he’s half-asleep. Right now, it just makes everything that much harder.

“I know the feeling.”

Shiro lingers in bed longer than he should, re-memorizing the planes and angles of Keith’s face and the softness of his mouth and eyelashes. Nothing in the next two years will compare to the perfect serenity of this moment; even at his most wrecked, Keith is still the most beautiful man Shiro has ever seen. So slowly, Shiro leverages himself up so he can brush a kiss against Keith’s lips.

“What if I never got up?” Shiro whispers, falling back.

Keith opens one eye to watch him, drooping like just the one was hard enough. “You’d never have to leave me,” Keith answers.

That hits Shiro like a punch in the gut. “You’re right though,” Keith continues. “You should never get up from this bed.”

The offer is so tempting: just a long, beautiful summer day spent lounging with Keith in the starch white sheets, window thrown open to let in the fluttering desert breeze. Shiro would kiss Keith like they were careless teenagers, make out with him until his mouth had gone red and swollen and their bodies were woven together, inseparable and perfect. It sounds like the best idea he’s ever heard.

“Don’t tempt me,” he says instead, because the fantasy is nothing more than that.

“Never.”

They hold hands and breathe in sync until Shiro can no longer justify lying still when he has places to be. He pecks a gentle kiss on Keith’s lips before rolling out of bed to make his way to the bathroom. He brushes his teeth in a haze, mind spinning at hundreds of miles an hour.

He doesn’t quite know _what_ he’s feeling right now, but it sits heavy in his stomach, taking up room and distracting him. It’s not quite anxiety, not quite happiness—not even fully anticipation. After he spits into the sink and rinses off his toothbrush, Shiro leans both hands on the sink and stares himself down in the mirror. He wishes he could tell himself it will be okay, but he can’t shake the thought that the person looking back in the mirror looks far too young for any of this.

His hair is shorter than he normally prefers it, cropped in anticipation of how difficult it’s going to be to cut hair on a spaceship. Shiro pushes his bangs back, takes in his face, smooth and almost completely unmarked, and tries to convince himself that this is what a person who goes to outer space looks like.

Shiro has wanted almost his whole life to fly among the stars, which isn’t a secret. What’s surprising now is how terrified he is of fulfilling his dreams.

Keith pads into the bathroom behind him, mouth dropped open in a jaw-cracking yawn. “Your aunt texted, said they’re all up and getting ready,” Keith says sleepily from behind him. He gets up and pushes his way into Shiro’s space, nuzzling his face between Shiro’s bare shoulder blades and kissing the skin there. “We’ll be at breakfast when you get done with the morning debrief.”

Shiro blows out a breath. He never particularly wants to see Iverson, but especially not this early in the morning. “You don’t have to be up now,” he says. “I know you hate mornings and—”

“Shut up,” Keith says. He tightens his arms around Shiro’s waist and pokes his head up over Shiro’s shoulder. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Shiro watches him in the mirror. Keith’s face is sleepy but determined, set against the backdrop of the bathroom’s white tiled walls. He always looks beautiful, but this domestic vulnerability threatens to rip Shiro’s heart out of his chest and stomp all over his resolve.

They get ready in silence together, using the bathroom in tandem and dressing like they have countless times before. The only difference is that now Keith is packing things into his backpack as he uses them in order to take them back to his own dorm room. Watching Keith’s toothbrush and comb disappear into his bag hurts.

Everything Shiro is taking with him to space has already been transported to the launch facility and packed away. It wasn’t a lot in the first place, but seeing the rest of his possessions packed away in just four medium-sized cardboard moving boxes seems like it isn’t enough. And this room—it means so much to Shiro, not simply because of the amount of time he’s spent here but because so much of that time has been with _Keith_. That bed is the first place they slept together. That shower is the first place Shiro washed Keith’s hair for him. That desk is technically Shiro’s but may as well just belong to Keith because it’s the place where he always sits.

There’s history here, but as soon as he steps outside of this door, the room he called home for him _and_ Keith for the last two years will no longer belong to either of them. That’s a heavy weight.

“You go ahead,” Shiro says, hollow. “I need a few minutes.”

“Sure,” Keith says, knowing and accepting. He touches his fingertips to Shiro’s jaw just for a moment and smiles sadly. “I’ll see you at breakfast.” He slips out of the room without a backwards glance.

Shiro heaves a sigh in the empty room.

He doesn’t quite know what to do now. Actually, that’s not quite right; he has a final briefing with the Garrison officers, then breakfast to eat with his family and his husband, a last press conference, and goodbyes to give before some officer approaches him to tell him that it’s time to leave and get ready for launch. It’s more of a mental thing, being at a loss like this. All he knows is that he’s desperately ready to go to space but he doesn’t want to say goodbye to this place or his favorite people.

For the first time in days, Shiro doesn’t actually feel like he’s about to start crying at any moment. Instead, there’s a weird sense of cold, rationalized anxiety settled over him.

He walks over to the desk and begins opening drawers to triple check that nothing is left behind. He finds nothing in the desk or the dresser, but when he pokes his head into the tiny closet, a glint of metal peeks up at him from the floor. Reaching down, he picks up a pair of dog tags that must have fallen out of a pocket.

Technically, the Garrison regulations stipulate that anyone presently wearing a Garrison uniform must also be wearing their tags—it’s a holdover from the Navy, the sort of thing they drill new cadets about at orientation. In practice, no one really wears them except the first years who are still scared of the orientation threats and the oldest members of the brass who make the threats. Keith is neither of those things, and he wears his dog tags about as regularly as Shiro does, which is to say practically never.

Never, except for now.

Shiro pulls his own chain out from under his uniform absently and compares them. He stares down at the matching raised words—he lost a pair of tags about a year ago and recommissioned them just in case. Absently, Shiro drags his thumbnail over the letters.

> SHIROGANE  
>  TAKASHI  
>  698005426AP  
>  BUDDHIST

His lips soundlessly mouth the words. It’s odd to think that if he dies in space, no one will be able to come collect the tags from his body and they’ll fade into stardust with him. It completely defeats the purpose of even wearing them, cutting right at the heart of all those threats from officers about the importance of wearing them as a safety precaution and a tradition. But the thought is comforting that one day, if he dies out there, someone making a routine stop on Kerberos moon hundreds of years in the future will be able to identify his body based purely on the tags still hanging around his neck.

No matter what happens to him out there, it’s only the end of his world. Not everyone else’s.

Fingers numb, Shiro slips off his wedding ring, holding it up to the little LED light in the closet. It’s another form of identification, really. Only this one marks him as something utterly different than a soldier at the Garrison. It marks him as Keith’s.

He threads it onto the second pair of dog tags and stuffs them into his pocket. Closing his eyes, Shiro presses his lips to where the tags join onto the chain, eyes shut, and says a quiet prayer.

***

The briefing is tense. Matt looks like he got about as much sleep as Keith did, and Sam gets into an argument with Iverson about—something, Shiro isn’t paying attention, really. By the time they stumble off to breakfast, their families have already eaten and are talking with each other. Keith’s face softens when Shiro’s eyes meet his.

“Thank fuck I don’t have to go to any more meetings with Iverson for the next two years,” Shiro tries to joke with him as he sits with a plate of food, but it falls flat. Ryou hears it and snorts, throwing an elbow into Shiro’s side, but he doesn’t look over from his conversation with Colleen Holt. “Hey,” Shiro says, nudging Keith’s shoulder with his own. “You okay?”

Keith smiles tightly. It looks incredibly fake. “I’m fine. You should eat, though.”

Shiro opens his mouth to protest, but his Aunt Tomoko starts shooting him with questions about the launch. As Shiro answers them, he tries to take Keith’s hand under the table, but as soon as he grabs it, Keith withdraws.

“Be right back. Bathroom,” Keith says. He pushes his chair back from the table and slides out of the room.

Shiro’s confusion must show on his face, because Tomoko says quietly, “He’s not taking this very well, I think.”

Sighing in frustration, Shiro says, “He was fine this morning.” As much as it pains him to even have the thought, Shiro doesn’t have _time_ to chase down Keith and assuage his fears—he has a packed schedule and he just wants Keith to be there with him as much as he can.

“He’ll come back soon,” Tomoko says confidently. She reaches across the table and nudges Shiro’s plate closer to him. “Eat. You need to have plenty of strength for today.”

Shiro forces himself to eat his breakfast and washes it down with a glass of orange juice. He does his best to soak in just _being_ with his family, but Keith is a glaringly absent hole at his side. He doesn’t slip back in until Shiro is already standing to make his way to the press conference. His family will be there, of course, but Iverson insists on having a sound check.

“Keith, can we talk?” Shiro asks on his way by.

“About what?”

Shiro studies his face. “I know something is wrong,” he says as gently as possible. “Will you tell me what’s going on?”

“I—yeah. Yeah, just after this thing, okay?” Keith says, voice small. He doesn’t quite meet Shiro’s eyes. “I love you.”

“I love you too, baby,” Shiro says, taking Keith’s face between his hands and landing a firm kiss on his forehead. “I love you so, so much.”

Finally, Keith cracks a smile, and he thumps a hand on Shiro’s chest, familiar spark reborn. “You better get going. It’s not too late for Iverson to decide to strangle you for tardiness.”

“I’d like to see him try,” Shiro says. He kisses Keith one more time before he goes because he needs all the stockpiled kisses he can get.

The press conference is—well, it’s boring. The reporters ask the same questions they’ve been asking since the launch was announced, and so Shiro gives the same answers because there’s only so many different things he can say about how it feels to be part of the first crew to fly as far as Pluto. Keith watches him from the back of the room, choosing not to sit with the families and instead making himself stand out even more in his garishly orange cadet uniform, but it’s comforting. Shiro speaks to him, and he’s positioned just right so it almost looks like Shiro is speaking to the whole room, based on where his gaze is directed.

It’s not a hardship. The cadet uniform might be a poor color choice, but Keith has always been attractive and Shiro could drink his fill of that man every day and still find it to be never enough.

The goodbyes are the hardest. Generously, the Garrison has shown them to a couple empty classrooms—the Holts in one and the Shiroganes next door. A sense of finality fills the air, choking Shiro’s lungs and stopping his breath. He throws his arms around his aunts with more force than is really necessary, but he can’t contain himself—he’s going to miss them _so much_ , miss their weekly video calls and the knowledge that he can theoretically buy a plane ticket to Chicago at any time to go see them. The distance will be insurmountable.

“I want you to be safe,” Tomoko says firmly, her fingers digging into his shoulder blades.

“And you write as often as you can,” Zareena adds, crushing in closer against them.

Shiro’s memories of his life before he lived with his aunts are few and far between, more vague impressions than anything else because of how young he was. They’re his parents in every way that matters, and living the last seven years so far away from them was hard in ways he couldn’t have imagined before doing it. He expects the same thing to happen again now.

Ryou thumps him on the back and tells him to name an alien bacteria after him, and Shiro promises that he’ll do his best. Ruhi, despite being a full foot shorter than Shiro, manages to crack his spine with the force of her hug.

“Nice,” he wheezes in shock.

“You can have another one when you get back,” she says, laughing. “All you giant people in this family need to be taken down a peg.”

It’s an old family argument, and Shiro smirks down at her. “At least I can reach the top shelf at the grocery store.”

But Ruhi just sniffs. “What do you think I got a husband for? I don’t even set foot in grocery stores. Get it together, Takashi.”

Shiro’s laughter turns to tears in the back of his throat, but he refuses to let her see that as he swoops in for another hug and grabs at Ryou’s forearm to pull him in, too. “I’m going to miss you guys so much,” he says.

“I’ll probably miss you too,” Ryou says. When he pulls back and meets Shiro’s eyes, though, the look on his face is bittersweet.

Tomoko cries on him one more time before she drags herself away, hauling the rest of the family behind her. “You two should say goodbye in privacy,” she says on their way out, winking at Keith even with dried tear tracks on her cheeks. “We’ll be watching the launch and cheering, Takashi! Make us proud.”

And then Shiro and Keith are alone.

Shiro walks from the middle of the room to where Keith is leaning on the wall. “Will you talk to me now?” Shiro says gently, taking both of Keith’s hands in his.

“I . . . .” Keith trails off. He shakes his head roughly. “Shiro, I can’t.”

“Please,” Shiro begs. He can’t leave like this. “Just—whatever it is, baby, we’ll work it out, I promise.”

“Don’t _lie_ to me,” Keith snaps. Immediately, his eyes go big and he covers his mouth with one hand. “That’s not—I wasn’t—”

“Is this about me leaving?” Shiro asks, as gently as he can. He knows this: it’s Keith trying to resist his fight or flight instinct, and Shiro has talked him down from this ledge before.

Slowly, Keith relaxes, slumping against the wall and closing his eyes. “I’m sorry,” he whispers.

Shiro leans in, nosing at Keith’s temple and holding him carefully, making sure he isn’t caging Keith in. “What for?”

Keith swallows audibly. “I promised I wasn’t going to make this about me,” he says. “I—I swore that I could be strong, but I just—I—” Keith cuts off in the middle of a sob, the noise tearing out of his chest like it just won the fiercest battle with Keith’s strength of will.

“It’s okay, Keith,” Shiro says. He gathers Keith up into his arms and rocks him a little from side to side. “I understand, baby, it’s okay.”

“No, it’s—I don’t want you to _leave_ me,” Keith says, voice cracking. “Please don’t leave me.”

“I have to go, but, baby, I promise I’m not leaving you,” Shiro says. Keith has been holding it together so, so well these last few days, Shiro realizes now. But now the dam has broken, and when a sharp rap comes on the door, he curses to himself. “Baby, baby, listen—ey, listen, okay?” he says, trying to get Keith to pull back enough from his shoulder to look him in the eyes. “This isn’t forever. I promise, I’m coming back for you.”

Keith is silent, searching Shiro’s face for something. His watery eyes are red, and his bottom lip is swollen like he bit it to stop his sobs. “What if you don’t?” he whispers. There’s another knock on the door.

“I’m _never_ going to leave you,” Shiro swears, so vehement that the words scratch against his throat and a tear slips down from the corner of his eye. “Don’t you ever think for a single second that I won’t come back to you. I promised you, I _married_ you,” he says, grabbing at the chain around Keith’s neck and pulling it out of his collar so Shiro can hold it in his fist. “I love you.”

“Lieutenant Shirogane?” an unfamiliar voice calls through the door. “We’re on a tight schedule, sir, we need you to start heading for the launch site.”

“Just—hold on, I’ll be there!” Shiro calls, frustration leaking into his voice. “Keith. Do you understand that?”

Keith nods without breaking Shiro’s gaze. “Yes.”

“Promise me you won’t think that I’m leaving you,” Shiro says. He needs to hear it, needs Keith to say out loud to him that he’s not going to think these terrible, poisonous things anymore. “You’re the most important person. You are.”

Keith bumps his forehead against Shiro’s. “If you promise you’re coming back, I promise you I believe it,” Keith whispers hollowly.

The door opens, and a different voice this time, clearly annoyed: “Lieutenant Shirogane!”

“Keith, I can’t—I have to go,” Shiro says, desperation leaking into his voice. He glances back at the annoyed looking officer, apologetic, but he isn’t leaving until he feels like he can. “Just—just keep these safe for me, will you?” Plunging a hand into his pocket, Shiro withdraws the dog tags with his wedding ring on them, and presses them into Keith’s hands.

“You’re not . . . ?” Keith asks, looking down at the wedding ring in confusion. “But you said you’re not—”

Shiro silences him with a press of lips, hands holding either side of his face and thumbs stroking at his cheekbones. “Hold onto it for me,” he says. “And every time you look at it, I want you to remember that I want it back when I return to Earth. When I return to you.”

Keith’s fingers close around the tags and ring, a new determination settling in his eyes when he looks up at Shiro. “Then you have to take this,” he says, and he yanks his own chain off over his head and hooks it over Shiro’s. “I want it back, too.”

And Shiro stares down at it, at the ring he agonized over for who knows how long, first online and then hidden in Matt’s desk drawer, waiting for Shiro to get together the courage to do something with it. “Okay,” he says. “I’ll hold onto it, for you.”

Keith hauls him into one last, final kiss, diving into his mouth like it’s the first and last and only time they’ll ever get to touch, and Shiro welcomes him. He doesn’t care that there’s at least one angry officer staring at them and trying to pull him away, or that the door is open and anyone could see. He tastes and savors every last square inch of Keith’s mouth, burns with the feeling of Keith’s body pressed against his, and does his best to convey every single scorching bit of love running through his whole self.

He doesn’t leave room for the fear that any of this could be lost to space.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i want to thank every single person who read/kudos'd/commented on/literally even clicked for 5 seconds on this fic. you're all so amazing, and i'm so glad i got to write this fic and share it with you. you've kept me going.
> 
> and my very dear friend who edited this for me and cheered me on and sent me memes and basically is the reason this grew from a short oneshot to an unintended monster...this is your fault, dude.
> 
> well, i've already started some work on the sequel, so i hope i'll see you all around for that!! let me know what you thought, and you can find me on tumblr @[disloyalpunk](http://disloyalpunk.tumblr.com)!


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